Re: CR Survey of 48,000 cellular users

Joel Koltner wrote:
> "SMS ???. ?" <scharf.steven@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote in message 
> news:4755f2af$0$84232$742ec2ed@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>> I wonder how long Sprint can continue in business as an independent
company. 
>> They have the worst coverage, a poor selection of handsets, and their
Wi-Max 
>> plan has gone nowhere.
> 
> To most consumers, none of these matter that much:

Apparently it matters a lot, as Sprint continues to hemorrhage customers 
despite having some good deals on calling plans. It used to be unheard 
of for any carrier to have an actual decline in the number of 
subscribers, but Sprint has managed to do this in the most recent 
quarter. Verizon and AT&T continue to add market share, though AT&T was 
losing market share until the iPhone launch.

> So you see, while Sprint may or may not be that great of a business, the

> reasons it is or isn't don't have a lot to do with the reasons you
listed, 
> IMO.  Keep in mind that someone posting to this newsgroup -- such as 
> yourself -- is usually *quite* far from the "average" Sprint customer,
being 
> *much* more knowledgable about Sprint's offerings and business.

Clearly Sprint's loss of subscribers is not due to people reading 
Usenet, it's for other reasons. When you rank last in 19 out of 20 
markets in an influential publication like Consumer Re****ts, it has an 
influence on the general population of subscribers.

I do have an issue with CR's rankings, in that often the second place 
finisher is _not_ the carrier with the second best coverage. In my area, 
T-Mobile has the worst coverage, but was ranked second because of other 
factors taken into consideration in the ratings. In reality, AT&T has 
the second-best coverage in my area, followed by Sprint in third, and 
T-Mobile is last. I think this is the case in many cities, where AT&T is 
usually second to Verizon in terms of quality of coverage.