On T-Mobile: A merger with Sprint-Nextel has been mentioned several times. The combined company would have a customer base about the same size as AT&T or Verizon
After the difficulties of merging with Nextel (competing corporate cultures and different networks), I doubt Sprint would be eager to see history repeat itself. To have to run possibly 5 different networks (CDMA, GSM, iDEN, 4G/WiMAX, LTE) would be too much to handle.
Agreed, totally asinine. Carriers tend to acquire each other along protocol boundaries. Verizon acquired Alltel, which was a predominantly CDMA2000 company. In addition, T-Mobile's network is predominantly urban, which is already well-covered by the existing larger carriers. They generally acquire carriers that are in areas for which they don't have coverage. Further:
* T-Mobile has been adding customers while Sprint has been losing them year over year. Just check their investor relations sites, it's in their quarterly report.
* T-Mobile has won ALL of the J.D. Power & Associates customer service awards for 5 years running.
* T-Mobile is the only nationwide carrier offering unsubsidized post-paid phone plans in the US. This can save up to $50/mo off of AT&T or Verizon.
* T-Mobile's data networks are not congested like AT&T's are. In addition, T-Mobile was the first US carrier to add HSPA+, which can achieve speeds that are at par with WiMAX in real world conditions.
* T-Mobile has never competed against the big three on coverage or phones. They compete on customer service and value.
I came here to say something similar. T-Mobile not only competes on customer service they destroy their competition in this area. (Value, too, with the unsubsidized plans.)
I have been with T-Mobile for about a year now after going through the pain of dealing with both Sprint and AT&T, I will not go back.
Sprint thought they knew what they were doing. On paper it sounded like a match made in heaven. They would scoop up Nextel's cash cow subscribers, and migrate them to CDMA. They made a big mistake when they migrated Boost mobile prepaid customers to iDEN shortly after the merger, maxing out the capacity of the existing Nextel towers and alienating Nextel subscribers. They ended up having to invest in additional 1800 iDEN towers nationwide to keep up, but they still ended up losing millions of subscribers. I believe a lot of those fleet contracts switched to Verizon, but the feds still use Nextel.
Interesting that Radio Shack is only changing their name and image now. They objected to Auto Shack's name in the late 80s forcing them to become AutoZone which really took off after the rebranding. It seems like they would have seen how well AutoZone did with a modern sounding name and done the same before now.
I don't think a modern sounding name would help revive Radio Shack. AutoZone would do fine with many names, because they carry products people want to buy. I can't think of anything I'd want to buy from Radio Shack, now that they don't carry electronic components any more.
Some of these arguments are very weak, especially for Kia which amounted to "Well, Ford and GM couldn't handle a dozen brands each so obviously Hyundai can't handle two." Couldn't the author give at least sales figures?
After the difficulties of merging with Nextel (competing corporate cultures and different networks), I doubt Sprint would be eager to see history repeat itself. To have to run possibly 5 different networks (CDMA, GSM, iDEN, 4G/WiMAX, LTE) would be too much to handle.