The Decline of Sprint...What Happened?

One of the biggest names in telecommunications is gone. This video talks about the history of Sprint while attempting to identify the biggest reasons behind its decline.
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Company Declines:
Kmart: • The Decline of Kmart.....
Blockbuster: • The Decline of Blockbu...
RadioShack: • The Decline of RadioSh...
Solo Cups: • The Decline of Solo......
Toys "R" Us: • The Decline of Toys R ...
hhgregg: • The Decline of hhgregg...
Pan Am: • The Decline of Pan Am....
ESPN: • The Decline of ESPN......
Gibson: • The Decline of Gibson....
iHeartMedia: • The Decline of iHeartM...
Bon-Ton: • The Decline of Bon-Ton...
Kodak: • The Decline of Kodak.....
General Electric: • The Decline of General...
Woolworth: • The Decline of Woolwor...
Dell: • The Decline of Dell......
Sears: • The Decline of Sears.....
Payless: • The Decline of Payless...
Hostess: • The Decline of Hostess...
Redbox: • The Decline of Redbox....
Nokia: • The Decline of Nokia.....
JCPenney: • The Decline of JCPenne...
Quiznos: • The Decline of Quiznos...
GameStop: • The Decline of GameSto...
NASCAR: • The Decline of NASCAR....
Shopko: • The Decline of Shopko....
MoviePass: • The Decline of MoviePa...
Reebok: • The Decline of Reebok....
The Gap: • The Decline of The Gap...
Pier 1 Imports: • The Decline of Pier 1 ...
Sbarro: • The Decline of Sbarro....
AOL: • The Decline of AOL...W...
Long John Silver's: • The Decline of Long Jo...
Chuck E. Cheese's: • The Decline of Chuck E...
GNC: • The Decline of GNC...W...
Hertz: • The Decline of Hertz.....
Steak 'n Shake: • The Decline of Steak '...
CiCi's Pizza: • The Decline of CiCi's ...
Boston Market: • The Decline of Boston ...
Yahoo: • The Decline of Yahoo!....
Montgomery Ward: • The Decline of Montgom...
Fry's Electronics: • The Decline of Fry's E...
Souplantation: • The Decline of Souplan...
Gateway: • The Decline of Gateway...
BlackBerry: • The Decline of BlackBe...
Sports Authority: • The Decline of Sports ...
Atari: • The Decline of Atari.....
KB Toys: • The Decline of KB Toys...
Pizza Hut: • The Decline of Pizza H...
MGM: • The Decline of MGM...W...
FYE: • The Decline of FYE...W...
HP: • The Decline of HP...Wh...
Forever 21: • The Decline of Forever...
Guitar Center: • The Decline of Guitar ...
WCW: • The Decline of WCW...W...
Sega: • The Decline of Sega......
KFC: • The Decline of KFC...W...
Macy's: • The Decline of Macy's....
Circuit City: • The Decline of Circuit...
Bed Bath & Beyond: • The Decline of Bed Bat...
Carvana: • The Decline of Carvana...
Fuddruckers: • The Decline of Fuddruc...
Borders: • The Decline of Borders...
Friendly's: • The Decline of Friendl...
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  • @companyman114
    @companyman11410 ай бұрын

    Correction: Sprint originated from the *Southern* Pacific Railroad, not the *South* Pacific Railroad as I stated in the video. I apologize for the mistake and appreciate all the viewers who told me about it. Other than that, I hope everyone likes the video.

  • @TheJingles007

    @TheJingles007

    10 ай бұрын

    How dare you make a mistake? I’m totally unsubscribing lmao jk

  • @radar_the_fox

    @radar_the_fox

    10 ай бұрын

    can u do vid on gabes

  • @JoeHamelin

    @JoeHamelin

    10 ай бұрын

    You missed in 1996 Sprint long distance got phracked for about $64,000,000 in toll calls. I have a story about that.

  • @user-fn4jl3uk2s

    @user-fn4jl3uk2s

    10 ай бұрын

    Lmfao do people actually cry their eyes out about these tiny little mistakes. 99.99% of people watching will never notice much less care

  • @oldmanbiscuit7518

    @oldmanbiscuit7518

    10 ай бұрын

    Unprofessional and fake news. Feel ashamed...ASHAMED!!!!!!!

  • @SimuLord
    @SimuLord10 ай бұрын

    Sprint's customer service was awful even by the low standards of telecom companies. Their corporate motto should've been "We're not happy until you're not happy."

  • @catt3911

    @catt3911

    10 ай бұрын

    That's a GOOD one lol.

  • @lustfulvengance

    @lustfulvengance

    10 ай бұрын

    🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣

  • @theswampangel3635

    @theswampangel3635

    10 ай бұрын

    In my opinion the poor customer service is what doomed sprint. You just can’t treat customers with that kind of contempt so long as you have competition.

  • @silverwheel

    @silverwheel

    10 ай бұрын

    I was with Sprint for my first cell phone and kept them for a lot longer than I should have. I had asked several times to not receive sales calls about plan offers and they stubbornly refused to accept that request. They would always insist that it was fine since it didn't count against my minutes, and finally I just had to scream my ass off at the poor guy on the other end that I would cancel my service if I ever received another sales call from them. That's how hard you had to push just to get them to stop cold-calling you all the time.

  • @OfficialCyaned

    @OfficialCyaned

    10 ай бұрын

    I actually do remember this, that was the reason why my father switched with Verizon because of their service.

  • @BoulevardFan28
    @BoulevardFan2810 ай бұрын

    I will never forget driving past their headquarters in Overland Park, Kansas... and having 1/5 bars of signal.

  • @alandoane9168

    @alandoane9168

    10 ай бұрын

    FACTS. Sprint was HOT GARBAGE.

  • @tealover70

    @tealover70

    10 ай бұрын

    LOOOOL BRUTAL

  • @samholdsworth420

    @samholdsworth420

    9 ай бұрын

    Lmao

  • @LovleyLemonade
    @LovleyLemonade6 ай бұрын

    I remember Sprint ads everywhere and all of a sudden nowhere. I know people had problems with Sprint, but it feels like someone I knew but was never close to got murdered and nobody cared. It was just very bizarre how quiet their death was.

  • @The_Maytron
    @The_Maytron10 ай бұрын

    As a NASCAR fan is kinda weird to think that Sprint is gone. For those who don’t know Sprint/Nextel was the title sponsor of the NASCAR cup series from 2004-2016. I grew up thinking that Sprint was a huge company that was doing well and spending millions on the nascar deal because of that. It’s kinda wild to say the one of the most recognizable brands to ever be involved with NASCAR no longer exists.

  • @bruhmachine87

    @bruhmachine87

    8 ай бұрын

    its weird to not have a title sponsor for the cup series anymore

  • @eligreg99

    @eligreg99

    7 ай бұрын

    Not ragging on NASCAR but just to put things into perspective NASCAR only makes a yearly revenue of about 80-100 million compared to larger sports like the NBA that easily rakes in 10 billion dollars every year in profit. NASCAR is not a very big market and is more niche

  • @HumbertoSaabedra

    @HumbertoSaabedra

    7 ай бұрын

    @@eligreg99This is true for all auto racing in general. Before NASCAR signed their Nextel title sponsorship, RJ Reynolds essentially subsidized NASCAR's growth from the late 1970s to the late 1990s. The same was true of Philip Morris subsidizing both Formula 1 and what was then known as CART, but more commonly known as IndyCar. Once the tobacco money went away in the mid-2000s because of the Master Settlement Agreement, auto racing shrank in stature and awareness substantially. What kept NASCAR afloat in the mid-2000s were their massive TV rights fees.

  • @dominicm2175

    @dominicm2175

    7 ай бұрын

    I’m a bit older and don’t follow NASCAR but my biggest memory of NASCAR is the Marlboro Cup….another huge sponsor name that although still exists, is no longer allowed to advertise

  • @yasugi0153

    @yasugi0153

    6 ай бұрын

    The Winston Cup brother

  • @RealRSmokinJoe
    @RealRSmokinJoe10 ай бұрын

    As a former Sprint employee I can tell you they didn't care about their customers at all, we were even told to tell customers "your tower is under maintenance" when they complained about signal loss, even though the customer would be in a no coverage area. It was a blessing in disguise when they laid of 4000+ of us and sent our jobs overseas.

  • @khasualentertainment6734

    @khasualentertainment6734

    10 ай бұрын

    We know.. theyve been saying that since 2003

  • @michaeljimenez410

    @michaeljimenez410

    10 ай бұрын

    Geez i have T-Mobile Magenta Max with my iPhone 13Pro and the service is trash. When I went to tell the store they said the exact same thing. “The towers are out rn” bs

  • @trickywily2823

    @trickywily2823

    10 ай бұрын

    100$ payments lol I never ever got one even when everyone did lol

  • @dougkaspar9756

    @dougkaspar9756

    10 ай бұрын

    Sprint didn’t have towers across Nebraska and T-Mobile only has coverage when they roam on at&t

  • @new2me78

    @new2me78

    10 ай бұрын

    @@michaeljimenez410 Verizon is pretty good, but costs a bit more I believe.

  • @fumeiusr
    @fumeiusr10 ай бұрын

    Sprint was pretty awesome if you lived in a city with good sprint coverage and never really went out of town

  • @michaeldixon3485

    @michaeldixon3485

    10 ай бұрын

    😂😂😂

  • @clockwork9825

    @clockwork9825

    10 ай бұрын

    😂😂😂

  • @7u7kia35

    @7u7kia35

    10 ай бұрын

    😂😂😂

  • @lorumipsum1129

    @lorumipsum1129

    10 ай бұрын

    I've used all carriers but sprint . The closest I got was shortly after the T-Mobile sprint merger, you could force an iPhone too use the sprint network by choosing a specific code. I think you could also do it during covid

  • @nicholasdean3467

    @nicholasdean3467

    10 ай бұрын

    So it was like TMobile

  • @lukethompson5558
    @lukethompson55589 ай бұрын

    You should have mentioned how Sprint got so big in their heyday (2000-2003?), because they were the only ones to offer no long distance or roaming charges, which for many customers meant reasonable bills, less than half what others were charging. Back then, roaming didn’t mean using another provider’s network, it just meant leaving your county! So this was a huge advantage, and it took the other carriers about 3 years to finally cave and stop charging roaming & LD. After that point, sprint struggled and grew slower than all the other companies.

  • @TheSpike4780
    @TheSpike478010 ай бұрын

    They had a customer service call center here in Central Florida; it was notorious for having paramedics showing up several times a day due to employees having constant heart and panic attacks, the threat of the girl from HR showing up to your desk with a box from not meeting metrics/selling enigmatic products that did nothing.

  • @wilm3864

    @wilm3864

    9 ай бұрын

    Was it in the Tampa area? Computer Generated Solutions had a call center there, and they were contracted out to Sprint.

  • @raptorcon

    @raptorcon

    8 ай бұрын

    Probably the Keller site.

  • @pulsatingsausageboy2076
    @pulsatingsausageboy207610 ай бұрын

    I gave them a try twice. Sprint had hands down the worst customer service year after year. They knew it and did absolutely nothing to fix it. Their demise was inevitable. And no one misses them.

  • @mrshadow8096

    @mrshadow8096

    10 ай бұрын

    They probably knew they were getting laid off and no longer give a shit, that’s my guess I never had them personally

  • @GoodfellasX21

    @GoodfellasX21

    10 ай бұрын

    Customer service? We're in the 2020s. You don't been to talk to people anymore dork

  • @TMish73829

    @TMish73829

    10 ай бұрын

    Couldn’t agree more. I had them in college and moved to Verizon after that. Never looked back.

  • @19MAD95

    @19MAD95

    10 ай бұрын

    Funny enough every time I view sprint it was amazing customer service. Extremely easy and relatively cheap. I guess YMMV

  • @TheSalacious1

    @TheSalacious1

    10 ай бұрын

    I worked for Sprint customer service for 6 months. They viewed the customer service employees as an unnecessary expense that should be phased out. All of our training was dedicated to selling extra crap to callers. We had no ability to resolve technical problems, adjust bills, or offer realistic advice. It was a nightmare, I genuinely feel bad about the small part I played in their company because of how we treated people. I can remember one lady in particular sobbing about a $1500 phone bill because of an international call, just recalling the memory makes the pit of my stomach feel hollow.

  • @fitfogey
    @fitfogey10 ай бұрын

    I was an operator at Sprint from 1991 to 1994 at 19 years old. Even only working part time from 6PM to 10PM at night 5 nights per week, they paid for my education. Tuition, books, etc. As a college student I couldn’t have asked for a better company to work for. Pretty good pay at the time and also paid education. I wish they would’ve made it as a company.

  • @RandomGamesProductions

    @RandomGamesProductions

    10 ай бұрын

    I mean they did make it as company for atleast a century but then they went downhill

  • @tylerdurden7869

    @tylerdurden7869

    7 ай бұрын

    Everyone else is glad they failed

  • @williamconrad1087

    @williamconrad1087

    5 ай бұрын

    I worked for them too. Even ended up marrying a hot coed who worked there too.

  • @user-ou6or7fe9q

    @user-ou6or7fe9q

    5 ай бұрын

    Ur tuition took em outta business

  • @TheHiredGun187
    @TheHiredGun1875 ай бұрын

    I was a Nextel customer when Sprint bought them out. I used to love my Nextel phone/2-Way radio. I used the 2-way radio WAY more than I used their celll phone service. I was so pissed when Sprint killed off the 2-way radio functions that I dumped them for a pre-paid cell.

  • @Jay-bh2sk

    @Jay-bh2sk

    5 ай бұрын

    My employers used the PTT service from Nextel I loved it. My sister worked for Nextel so we got cheap cell phone service dirt cheap. When they merged I left.

  • @rolandbaron5813

    @rolandbaron5813

    4 ай бұрын

    Same here Lol. Loved the nextel.

  • @WoodsPrecisionArms

    @WoodsPrecisionArms

    3 ай бұрын

    Me too I got caught in that trap because I was a Nextel customer and forced to go to Sprint

  • @WoodsPrecisionArms

    @WoodsPrecisionArms

    3 ай бұрын

    You know they have these cell structure world wide PTT radios out now - they look like a little square box with a shirt antenna and they use a sim no monthly service - check those out

  • @A22DNAL
    @A22DNAL10 ай бұрын

    It's just so sad that back in the late 90s-early 2000's they were TOPS. Great devices, zero complaints. I only got them as a carrier TOTALLY by accident. Saw a really cool cellphone they were selling to use Sprint IN A RADIO SHACK!!! I was hooked! What a spectacular downfall.

  • @DVeck89
    @DVeck8910 ай бұрын

    The best thing I can say about Sprint is that when my family signed up for their service in 2007, after a few months they basically kicked us out and let us out of the 2 year contract without any penalty because their service was so spotty in our area and we were roaming too much, which was free for us, but costing them more than we were worth apparently.

  • @chrispjr

    @chrispjr

    10 ай бұрын

    You all were part of a group of 1,000+ customers Sprint ‘fired’ probably. Google ‘sprint fires customers 2007’

  • @campbelltsamuel

    @campbelltsamuel

    9 ай бұрын

    That’s hilarious… getting out of that contract was a blessing. Sad that they only cared because they were losing money. You weren’t profitable 😂

  • @Thegonagle

    @Thegonagle

    7 ай бұрын

    I remember that fiasco. Why invest in the network and serve more customers profitably, when you can just cancel their service and lose the revenue permanently? Think that sounds ridiculous? That’s because it is!

  • @Astroqualia

    @Astroqualia

    6 ай бұрын

    They bought a massive chunk of 4g spectrum in the low band range from a company called clearwire a few years after that. I'm surprised they didn't bounce back from the spotty coverage issue.

  • @BugsyFoga
    @BugsyFoga10 ай бұрын

    Never forget that the guy who did ads for version switch to doing ads for sprint.

  • @wendellmotton4982

    @wendellmotton4982

    10 ай бұрын

    And then sprint went under

  • @BugsyFoga

    @BugsyFoga

    10 ай бұрын

    @@wendellmotton4982so that sort backfired on his part.

  • @SheldonAdama17

    @SheldonAdama17

    10 ай бұрын

    I’ll bet he’s regretting that now

  • @ckfinke7625

    @ckfinke7625

    10 ай бұрын

    @@SheldonAdama17 You mean Paul? He used to do Verizon Wireless for his question "Can you hear me now?"

  • @cdvideodump

    @cdvideodump

    10 ай бұрын

    Can you hear the L?

  • @Ruva226
    @Ruva22610 ай бұрын

    My family used Sprint for nearly a decade, and tbh, we never really had issues. The only times we’d lose service were in/at obvious places- vacationing on islands, hiking in the Appalachians, caving, thick concrete factories. I admit I only travel up and down the East and West coast tho. Looking at the coverage map, it seems they neglected the midwest lol.

  • @spikejnz
    @spikejnz10 ай бұрын

    True story: Sprints HQ campus was here in the South Kansas City area. The campus was larger than some small cities. You'd think that the best cell coverage in the city would be mear said campus, but you'd be wrong. In 2005 I lived in an apartment near the campus, and while my friends could get cell coverage anywhere in my apartment, I had to step onto the patio to make phone calls.

  • @maryfollin8461

    @maryfollin8461

    8 ай бұрын

    Yes. Came here for this comment.

  • @juelzm149
    @juelzm14910 ай бұрын

    Former customer and employee here. You hit the nail right on the head! Had Sprint skipped buying Nextel and spent that money upgrading the network to GSM/ lte and revamping customer service they would be the biggest wireless carrier today.

  • @ericdodson3630

    @ericdodson3630

    10 ай бұрын

    CDMA was the superior technology the only reason why GSM was seen as better is that it was cheaper to implement (as CDMA was owned by Qualcomm, and the licensing costs were outrageous) and as such was used in more places around the world (Hence the G stands for Global) since it was mandated by the EU.

  • @juelzm149

    @juelzm149

    10 ай бұрын

    @@ericdodson3630 I don't disagree. But given that, to me the choice was clear to go with GSM 🤷🏾

  • @stellanstafford6025

    @stellanstafford6025

    10 ай бұрын

    ​@ericdodson3630 Yes, but LTE is based off of GSM, meaning that it was bound to happen anyway

  • @jhoughjr1

    @jhoughjr1

    10 ай бұрын

    @@stellanstafford6025yeah I’ve never heard anyone say GSM was inferior to cdma

  • @dontdoxmebro

    @dontdoxmebro

    10 ай бұрын

    @@ericdodson3630 Cdma was not superior for smart phones. Originally you could not multi-task. Say you’re on the phone and wanna google a phone number - wasn’t possible

  • @robbobb4050
    @robbobb405010 ай бұрын

    I had completely forgotten about Sprint for years until I saw this video. It's so incredible how something so big can become so obscure. I can't even describe what the commercials were like and I saw them all the time

  • @gordontaylor2815

    @gordontaylor2815

    10 ай бұрын

    I'm old enough to remember some of the "pindrop" commercials first airing, but without the archive footage in the video to jog my memory I wouldn't have been able to tell you anything about them other than the "pindrop". It was really a meme before the term was defined. :)

  • @SimeonToko
    @SimeonToko9 ай бұрын

    I am apparently one of a few former Sprint customers that actually liked my service. As an employee of Lucent Technologies I can say that 99-02 was a wild time for telecoms.

  • @Texas_Made_

    @Texas_Made_

    9 ай бұрын

    No your not alone,❤them as well

  • @DispholidusTypus

    @DispholidusTypus

    2 ай бұрын

    Yea they tried the Midwest in select certain citie's and town's in the Midwest but they failed as VERZION, AT&T, TEEN MOBILE, & CRICKET had already dominated the regions of the Midwest!

  • @AgentStarke
    @AgentStarke8 ай бұрын

    When I bought my first cellphone back in 2002, Sprint was so far ahead of the game. While everyone else was using candybar style phones with monochrome displays, Sprint phones had full color screens and wireless web browsing. My Samsung N400 even had a miniature digital camera accessory that you could hook up to it to take pictures to share with other people on Sprint. This was completely unheard of at the time. My phone after that was an A600 with a built in camera and fully articulating flip screen. It seems archaic now but at the time it was so futuristic.

  • @CZsWorld
    @CZsWorld10 ай бұрын

    If anyone else said S.P.R.I.N.T was an acronym, I would have thought it was just part of the meme.

  • @zed4643

    @zed4643

    10 ай бұрын

    lol I love your videos

  • @Andrew110

    @Andrew110

    10 ай бұрын

    They SPRINTed to their death 😂 Also I've never had sprint, always been AT&T, T-mobile or MetroPCS

  • @unknownsway2280

    @unknownsway2280

    10 ай бұрын

    Bro it’s the reaper 😂

  • @unknownsway2280

    @unknownsway2280

    10 ай бұрын

    I love your videos

  • @jasonblankenship6076

    @jasonblankenship6076

    4 ай бұрын

    I remember their spokesperson the guy in glasses bailed on them and switched to T-Mobile

  • @thetrainhopper8992
    @thetrainhopper899210 ай бұрын

    My grandpa was a maintenance of way employee of the Southern Pacific and he used Sprint on the job. The SP had its hands in a lot of businesses in California’s history.

  • @stevencooper4422

    @stevencooper4422

    10 ай бұрын

    I had sprint in the California foothills all the way up until they were bought out by T Mobile. More reliable service in my town than AT&T, but worse call quality.

  • @dragonslayer8724
    @dragonslayer87249 ай бұрын

    Like someone else said, if you live in the city that had pretty decent sprint coverage, they can be pretty awesome. When I had sprint for a while in Northern Louisiana and Nevada, reception and internet speeds were pretty good. Customer servic 3:52 e was their downfall.

  • @Js16108
    @Js161086 ай бұрын

    I was in the sprint store buying a phone. The clerk had to borrow my mom’s straight talk phone to call his manager to the store. That was my experience with the service as well lol

  • @metaljay77
    @metaljay7710 ай бұрын

    My dad used to have Sprint for the family. After months of price hikes and random fees (of which representatives literally couldn't explain) he switched. They called him to try to get him back and he lit into them, he was livid that it took no time at all for them to reach out when he switched but they were all too happy to slap on fake fees and have seemingly no one in the call centers. I'm glad they're gone.

  • @jazzyjd9

    @jazzyjd9

    10 ай бұрын

    My experience is very similar

  • @owwerules

    @owwerules

    10 ай бұрын

    Exactly!! The fees made absolutely no sense. One month you can be paying $150 for a 4 phone plan and the next $200+ like??? Idk if anyone experience this but how they wouldn’t tell you about the extra insurance you get on your phone thats $10 extra a month and dont realize it till later and you ask what its for and they tell you some BS how if you break your phone you can get a new one? But in reality just tell you to go to Apple or Sprint online to do that and they still tell you NO to a brand new phone?? Sooo we were just paying an extra $10 per phone for no reason?

  • @Boostiverse

    @Boostiverse

    10 ай бұрын

    We were paying less than now, my service is also worse and I have to wait an extra year to get a new phone for the same price

  • @metaljay77

    @metaljay77

    10 ай бұрын

    @@owwerules they were a crooked company just trying to survive by any means necessary. They deserved to be shut down.

  • @7secondhero842

    @7secondhero842

    9 ай бұрын

    So he yelled at someone who had no part in that and was just trying to do their job? Nice, what a guy

  • @donvitocorleone
    @donvitocorleone10 ай бұрын

    I had Sprint as my wireless provider from 2016 to 2018. It was absolutely horrible. I ride the bus almost everywhere I go; it's crucial to have music or videos to watch to pass the time while riding. I'm not exaggerating when I say my signal would be lost every two minutes. I ended up switching to Verizon after my device contract was up. The difference with Verizon was like night and day.

  • @Bryan-ww9ql

    @Bryan-ww9ql

    10 ай бұрын

    I work for AT&T, Verizon, and T-Mobile. Verizon jobs are #1 priority as we are very time crunched due to the time limits Verizon puts on repair of any problems at the tower in the contracts for work. This is why Verizon is so much more reliable even having less towers.

  • @MasterMalrubius

    @MasterMalrubius

    10 ай бұрын

    It's not surprising to lose signal in downtowns. You may want to look into something called books.

  • @donvitocorleone

    @donvitocorleone

    10 ай бұрын

    @moo1234hot I love to read, however, for some reason, if I read while riding the bus, I get motion sickness and get all dizzy and nauseous. For some reason, this doesn't happen while watching videos.

  • @jayfrank8941

    @jayfrank8941

    10 ай бұрын

    @@MasterMalrubiusYou don’t have to be insulting to get your point across though. 🙄

  • @AngelicRequiemX

    @AngelicRequiemX

    10 ай бұрын

    @@MasterMalrubius Jackass.

  • @KinzuNight
    @KinzuNight10 ай бұрын

    Between 2005 and 2012 I tried AT&T, Verizon, and Sprint. Sprint was the one I stayed with until 2020. Service was fine in my area, and they offered cheaper easier to understand plans than the other 2. Unlimited text was something Sprint was doing better than Verizon and AT&T at one time. I always thought the biggest thing that hurt Sprint was the iPhone. Sprint did not have the biggest phone on the market. They did have the Android phones but so did Verizon and AT&T. At that time in the late 2000's early 2010's it was really the phone you wanted determined your carrier and Sprint never had one that made anyone feel the need to switch.

  • @dfirth224
    @dfirth22410 ай бұрын

    NOT South Pacific. It was Southern Pacific in California. Southern Pacific installed a microwave network in 1952 to avoid expensive long distance telephone charges. They had excess capacity so they leased capacity to large business and government customers. The name Sprint comes from "SP", Southern Pacific. SP had other spin offs over the years. Sunset magazine was started by Southern Pacific around 1900. They used a baggage car for a darkroom. Sunset was the main passenger train between San Francisco and New Orleans.

  • @jonathanmoore7096
    @jonathanmoore709610 ай бұрын

    I used to work for sprint. The issue was always that it had prepaid coverage levels with postpaid pricing. It was just overpriced for the level of service, despite all the promos and deals making it cheap.

  • @mcbeav

    @mcbeav

    10 ай бұрын

    I also used to work for them and they got really desperate the last 5 years. They introduced new plans and promotions seemingly every few weeks, and nothing was profitable for the company. Sprint was so far behind the competition that the billions injected from softbank literally did nothing. They coverage and service was bad. I had Verizon the entire time I worked for Sprint because the service was so bad.

  • @kittyprydex

    @kittyprydex

    10 ай бұрын

    That's all I remember people ever saying about Sprint, that it was overpriced. But also that it had its lifer devotees who cursed the day they had to change services.

  • @jonathanmoore7096

    @jonathanmoore7096

    10 ай бұрын

    @@kittyprydex yeah if the service worked in your area it was awesome. Cheap, good, but if it didn’t work it sucked. So for those who it did work for, losing it meant a price hike at a different carrier, which sucks.

  • @DistantThunderworksLLC
    @DistantThunderworksLLC10 ай бұрын

    As a former Sprint, now T-Mobile, employee on the IT side of things, I fully endorse this video. Well done (with a few minor missteps). The one thing you missed that happened pre-merger with Nextel that started the decline was the ION failed attempt. Several layoffs happened between 2001 and 2005, with that as a factor. Then after the Nextel merger, nearly annual layoffs (every year except two) began and continued until the merger with T-Mobile. And while the network had improved by that point, the brand was just too damaged, nearly went bankrupt in 2015, and although it could possibly have continued as a minor player for some time, the spectrum it owned put a target on it. By the time the T-Mobile merger happened Sprint was running with a skeleton crew, and the whole thing was teetering on the edge of a final death rattle (at least as far as being a major competitor in that arena), the culmination of one bad decision after another. From T-Mobile's perspective, while they did gain customers, the big prize was some much-needed spectrum.

  • @TheQuadLaunchers

    @TheQuadLaunchers

    10 ай бұрын

    So basically T-Mobile’s buyout was simply buying out the customer’s contracts before they all inevitably bailed.

  • @allaboutroofing2

    @allaboutroofing2

    10 ай бұрын

    T mobile is the worst. Sorry you work for a crap company.

  • @satsuke

    @satsuke

    10 ай бұрын

    @@TheQuadLaunchers Not exactly, the network fundamentals were pretty solid by that point .. we had 65M customers and were mostly soaking up the low end of the market. Not a great place to be, but not nearly as vulnerable as you imply. But that's not what T-Mobile bought .. tmo bought us for the spectrum we held. The customer base was less of a factor. Sprint had very high churn all the way through. As the video said, folks didn't stick around once their promotional rate expired.

  • @deepspacecow2644

    @deepspacecow2644

    10 ай бұрын

    ​@@satsukeWas the sprint wireline service good? I know cogent owns it now

  • @satsuke

    @satsuke

    10 ай бұрын

    @@deepspacecow2644 sprint wireline was kind of left out in the cold since 2006 or so .. they were built out as pretty standard T carrier and MPLS that automatically switched over and such if there was an interruption. So high uptime and reliable as far as I could tell. The issue was that other companies were aggressively marketing metro Ethernet, OC carriers and all that while Sprint didn’t for whatever reason. There was plenty of fiber in the ground, but the technology made that physical plant moot because with DWDM would multiply the capacity of existing fiber every few months to years. Towards the end the backbone was increasingly used for tower backhaul and such // internal use. Eg a cell tower in 2004 could be serviced by a couple of T1 .. 2010 needed 100 megabit, 2020 at time of merger needed gigabit.

  • @calebholmes5590
    @calebholmes559010 ай бұрын

    I had sprint up until the T-Mobile merger. I enjoyed it. I liked the unlimited data, the downside to sprint was coverage area. It had dead zones. Also for the longest you couldn’t use data while being on the phone that was so stupid to me. That being said sprint was possibly a legacy company for me. My mom worked for them under the Nextel years. Overall 6.5/10. It had its issues no doubt but I genuinely liked them.

  • @the.hipp0
    @the.hipp05 ай бұрын

    Dude, your research is top notch! Great work!

  • @wanfu5634
    @wanfu563410 ай бұрын

    That Nextel merger was a killer. It sucked up so much of their revenue that they barely had money for anything else. To make matters worse, they commonly competed on price, so any increase would go against their positioning. Whatever revenue they made was already spoken for.

  • @alwaysxnever

    @alwaysxnever

    10 ай бұрын

    Then the failed Clear wire 5g purchase didn't help.

  • @Livinglife3666
    @Livinglife366610 ай бұрын

    I had sprint from 2013-2020. One thing that wasn’t mentioned was Sprint’s Open World program. It allowed you to use your phone in 100+ countries without the hassle of having to buy a new sim. I remember being out on trail three days in a remote part of Iceland and I still had service. It turns out with cell coverage, and with most things in life, your mileage may vary.

  • @cdvideodump

    @cdvideodump

    10 ай бұрын

    Google Fi (my current carrier: full disclosure) has a similar program

  • @JL-sm6cg

    @JL-sm6cg

    10 ай бұрын

    Funny considering when I was moving to Vegas from Michigan in 2007, I had literally no service in parts of the Rockies.

  • @MasterMalrubius

    @MasterMalrubius

    10 ай бұрын

    @@JL-sm6cg So, you're saying your service crapped out in Vegas.

  • @johnr797

    @johnr797

    10 ай бұрын

    What was your mileage on the trail? See any hot springs?

  • @babiem2290

    @babiem2290

    10 ай бұрын

    You can still do that with t mobile it’s formally called simple global, now it’s known as international roaming and it’s 210+ counties

  • @gmualum08
    @gmualum089 ай бұрын

    All of what you said and let's not forget they were known for having absolutely TERRIBLE customer service like this video alluded to. Hundreds of stories of people who tried to take advantage of their "try it or your money back" plan, and when people didnt like their network, they tried to send the phone back only to have it be somehow lost in the mail and charge the customer full price to the tune of hundreds of dollars. No one wanted to go near Sprint after that

  • @jordanalia4595
    @jordanalia459510 ай бұрын

    Wow…I haven’t been to this channel in awhile. 1.5M + subs! I remember when you started. Congrats

  • @74stang2togo
    @74stang2togo10 ай бұрын

    My mother, sister, and myself all worked for Nextel during Sprint acquiring them. Nextel was incredible to work for, with a fantastic culture, services for their employees I've never seen elsewhere (at the call center I worked at, they had a gift/snack/book shop, full service cafeteria that was open all day, dry cleaning (they dropped it off at the gift/snack/book shop), and team building events that were genuinely fun, not cringey. Sprint ruined all of that, and one by one they did away with the jobs we had (I ran the give/snack/book shop, my mother ran the cafeteria, my sister was a customer service rep in the call center). The first thing they did was destroy the fun culture and shatter morale. I don't even think anyone was actually sad to be laid off, just scared about finding another job.

  • @thejourney1369

    @thejourney1369

    10 ай бұрын

    The company that I worked for used Nextel. We loved the walkie talkie feature.

  • @thepoop2995

    @thepoop2995

    10 ай бұрын

  • @satsuke

    @satsuke

    10 ай бұрын

    Nextel’s issue was almost entirely technological .. The people that had their phones loved them and the corporate culture was more flexible than sprint ever was. On the technology .. iden was great for push to talk and to some extent cell phone calls .. the dispatch function was rock solid. It was also capacity limited because of the inefficiency of the codec and the fact that the industry was going to date, something iden just couldn’t do except for small packets. Towards the end of iden, they were getting call blocking (all circuits are busy type thing) on even lightly loaded cells

  • @joeschoe4477

    @joeschoe4477

    10 ай бұрын

    Yeah, I was pleasantly surprised at Nextel culture and systems, coming from the Sprint side. Your billing and customer systems were so easy compared to our own! We really should have switched over to yours.

  • @rupertrobinson7085

    @rupertrobinson7085

    7 ай бұрын

    Good old Nextel Walkie ..

  • @LukeKickwalker
    @LukeKickwalker10 ай бұрын

    As a former employee, they were just sketchy and its no surprise t-mobile took us over

  • @ga6257
    @ga625710 ай бұрын

    Former sprint customer. You'd get signal in one part of town and then no signal for miles and miles. 10/10 would use again

  • @naeem_bari
    @naeem_bari10 ай бұрын

    Really good job on this video - as someone who was closer than most to the behind-the-scenes machinations at Sprint, you got a lot of things spot on. Sprint had some really awful leadership. The Nextel acquisition was bungled by their CEO at the time, Gary Forsee. Nextel was great. Sprint took it over and basically destroyed all the good things about it, leading to that massive $30B write down. And *of course* Forsee rode off into the sunset with a giant golden parachute. That was definitely the beginning of the end. The WiMax fiasco was the next 1-2 punch to ensure that Sprint would never again have the money to compete effectively. Their one big bright spot was the amount of spectrum they owned, and even then a lot of people were laughing at Softbank for paying $20B for this train wreck.

  • @jonfreeman9682

    @jonfreeman9682

    10 ай бұрын

    Did they ever make money selling to TMobile after? Softbank is one of the more successful equity mgmt company.

  • @ziggamon

    @ziggamon

    10 ай бұрын

    Sprint Exec: "Hey, you're supposed to push WiMax!" Sales: "B-b-but LTE is the new standard and WiMax is awf--" 🤜💥 Sprint Exec: "ANYONE ELSE GOTTA PROBLEM WITH WIMAX??!!"

  • @M33f3r

    @M33f3r

    10 ай бұрын

    From what I understand Nextel was amazing for construction workers and people like that that needed rugged stuff that was not completely dependent on cell signal. And I bet Sprint bungling it made a lot of blue collar guys who keep the world running pissed off.

  • @Harv72b

    @Harv72b

    10 ай бұрын

    @@M33f3r Nail on the head. I did cellular sales for a third party during that time frame, and after Sprint acquired Nextel all those rugged, practically unbreakable devices that the construction companies loved went away pretty much overnight & were replaced by models that looked the part but felt cheap and plasticy. Then they tried to incorporate the push to talk feature into some Sprint devices and failed miserably through a combination of the system not working consistently and, again, the devices being too cheaply made. It was supremely frustrating, as Sprint paid us a higher commission per line than the other companies, but it just wasn't worth the headache of trying to sell a customer on a device they didn't want & then deal with multiple complaints about Sprint in the weeks & months after. They just refused to learn.

  • @joeschoe4477

    @joeschoe4477

    10 ай бұрын

    Neither Forsee of Hesse were worth a damn.

  • @shamrice
    @shamrice10 ай бұрын

    As someone who was a Sprint customer for almost 20 years. The poor wireless network point was spot on. I live on Long Island NY and the fact that there were dead spots in service here even up until the T-Mobile acquisition is insanity given that this is one of the more densely populated areas of the whole country. I have to say, things were better once T-Mobile bought Sprint out but I still ended up jumping ship a year or so later.

  • @bruceh4180

    @bruceh4180

    9 ай бұрын

    Agreed. I'm near the dead center of Las Vegas and had similar issues. I did call once, and they told me to locate the nearest tower and stand near the window facing it. I told them I'm looking at your tower now.

  • @petter215jones
    @petter215jones10 ай бұрын

    Watching this with a smile on my face 😊

  • @jayablejay
    @jayablejay8 ай бұрын

    My jump into the cell phone race was with Sprint. In addition to the regular cellular service, they also had push-to-talk feature on their phones and that was a feature that i really enjoyed with my Sprint connected friends.

  • @averyeml
    @averyeml10 ай бұрын

    My mom worked in telecommunications throughout the 90s and 2000s. She worked for GTE, AT&T, Cingular, and more. It was a wild time and she has a lot of cool stories.

  • @Trevor_Schindler

    @Trevor_Schindler

    10 ай бұрын

    I question the authenticity of this post as Cingular later became At&t.

  • @renewagain6956

    @renewagain6956

    10 ай бұрын

    And why would that make you "question the authenticity" of her post? Cingular didn't become At&t until 2006.

  • @averyeml

    @averyeml

    10 ай бұрын

    @@Trevor_Schindler more importantly your first assumption is “I’m lying about my mom having various odd jobs to impress people in the comments of a KZread video about a phone company” instead of “she just listed them off the top of her head out of order instead of posting her mom’s resume?” Lemme put it this way. I was born in 1994. My mom worked in telecom in the 90s and 2000s and changed jobs pretty regularly. Do you think I know every job in order that she had from between the ages of 0 and, like, 8?

  • @Trevor_Schindler

    @Trevor_Schindler

    10 ай бұрын

    @@averyeml chill... Just made an observation. Glad the comment is real. 🖖

  • @bryanwagner790

    @bryanwagner790

    10 ай бұрын

    She told you, Trevor.

  • @miversen33
    @miversen3310 ай бұрын

    I used to work for Sprint for a handful of years. I left right after the merger was approved. The biggest issues that existed with the network was that it was congested as hell and the company had no money to invest in it. We routinely would report congestion issues and were told to kick rocks. It's absolutely true that if T-Mobile hadn't of bought sprint, Sprint would have gone the bankruptcy route.

  • @angelachouinard4581

    @angelachouinard4581

    10 ай бұрын

    Agree. Do you think the Nextel deal was at least one cause? The price tag was pretty high.

  • @coachk37

    @coachk37

    10 ай бұрын

    I was there back then too. I got out in 19

  • @miversen33

    @miversen33

    10 ай бұрын

    @@angelachouinard4581 imo the money paid was for the customers, as opposed to the assets. Though I wasn't with the company then so idk for sure. I think it hurt a lot, but had they made the "right" choice with LTE instead of WiMax, they would have been fine. Instead they ended up wasting millions on a technology that ultimately didn't pan out, AND were behind the curve on getting a competitive data network because of it. I joined soon after WiMax was officially killed and the clear decision by Sprint was just to pump customers into the network. They did eventually begin improving the network but between poor network performance, poor network coverage, and a switch to awful customer service, Sprint killed itself

  • @LatitudeSky

    @LatitudeSky

    10 ай бұрын

    Ironically, both the Sprint network and the T-Mobile network in my area are terribly over capacity thanks to cheap phone plans marketed at lower income customers who mostly occupy large swaths of apartments, all clustered together. Merging did nothing except put all those customers on the already bad T-Mobile network. Meanwhile, they cannot build any more towers because the wealthy land owners in the area right next to the apartments deeply resent the lower income part of town and refuse to do anything to make life better for the poor folks. The wealthy people are all on Verizon or AT&T and have no issues. It's amazing how class warfare impacts cell service.

  • @netzack

    @netzack

    10 ай бұрын

    I also worked for Nextel (and then Sprint)... but I was an AT&T customer the whole time.

  • @LordLazo
    @LordLazo10 ай бұрын

    I can’t believe I actually forgot about them

  • @nitsuj182
    @nitsuj18210 ай бұрын

    My dad had sprint since the late 90s I believe , I got my first sprint phone in 2004 , never thought that they would be erased from existence let alone by t mobile

  • @dougjojon
    @dougjojon10 ай бұрын

    I worked for Sprint from November 2000 to August 2020 and I think he really hit the high points. It was certainly a roller coaster ride. Not always the easiest company to work for but a great bunch of people for sure.

  • @garymckee8857

    @garymckee8857

    10 ай бұрын

    I contracted for Sprint from April 97 with a couple of layoffs until basically 17 July 2023 , but then Cogent had got what was left of the Sprint fiber backbone.

  • @jtatsiue

    @jtatsiue

    10 ай бұрын

    Why weren’t those great people ever able to parlay their greatness into even a decent level of customer service, incompetent, apathetic upper management? I love that they named themselves “Sprint”, and yet in every market they were slow AF, priceless.

  • @Piracanto

    @Piracanto

    10 ай бұрын

    That’s telecom for ya

  • @Piracanto

    @Piracanto

    10 ай бұрын

    @@jtatsiuehe was probably in the technical side, not management, and we’re powerless on that side…

  • @garymckee8857

    @garymckee8857

    10 ай бұрын

    @Piracanto Thanks, and you are correct. I have spent days and nights installing and turning up equipment so the upper management could look good and yes had problems myself with customer service because it was outsourced.

  • @HingerBinger
    @HingerBinger10 ай бұрын

    In the Kansas City area there was the Sprint Campus and the Sprint Center in downtown, they were a huge employer locally and a lot of people I know lost their jobs in this, it was sad to see.

  • @enigmawyoming5201

    @enigmawyoming5201

    10 ай бұрын

    Not just losing jobs, but with a company going bankrupt, loss of retirement nest egg also after of years of acquiring it. Talk about adding insult to injury!

  • @HingerBinger

    @HingerBinger

    10 ай бұрын

    @@enigmawyoming5201 i imagine that most Sprint employees weren't going to get a pension, but I'm curious of employer 401k contributions are safe in a bankruptcy.

  • @daffyduck1937

    @daffyduck1937

    10 ай бұрын

    I drove for Clark Products back from 04 to 10 and the cafeterias on Metcalf in KC Kansas they'd always talk when are we gonna lose our jobs we can't make anyone happy. It was a mess hope those folks eventually landed on their feet but my company too got swallowed up by someone else so I felt their pain.

  • @PebblesOTB

    @PebblesOTB

    10 ай бұрын

    The sprint campus in overland park looked cool but by the end was pretty empty. Funny thing is the HQ is 20 miles from me and Sprint had the worst service. TMobile is in factorial, just outside of Seattle and TMobile had the best signal in Seattle area. The sprint center in the power and light district is still going, just renamed

  • @red5standingby419

    @red5standingby419

    10 ай бұрын

    Having worked with some of those people at that campus I'm not sad to see it. Everyone I had to deal with there was toxic as hell.

  • @terrancecoard388
    @terrancecoard38810 ай бұрын

    My first job after the Air Force in 1979 I worked for Southern Pacific Communications headquartered in Burlingame California. We installed analog multiplex equipment and although it was a fun experience I left them after a year for MCI where I stayed for 28 years. Communications for those three decades was fun and exciting with new innovations at every turn. Loved every minute of it. Regardless of the company...billing and customer service were the weak points. During that time, the consumer got more educated about communications than ever. No company ever expected texting to become what it is! Or...or...for all the communication providers to be purchased by cell phone companies.

  • @migueld1733
    @migueld173310 ай бұрын

    As an economics major who aspires to launch his own business one day this channel is pure gold

  • @mattyroc77
    @mattyroc7710 ай бұрын

    I worked for Sprint...1 of the Big down falls for them, was when they bought out Nextel...Sprint bit off much more then they could chew with the acquisition of Nextel...When they tried to tie CDMA with Nextel,it turned into a HUGE barn fire...

  • @BattleOverride856

    @BattleOverride856

    10 ай бұрын

    Yeah I forgot about that. Also, Clearwire for 4G wimax service. Those two combined were epic fail

  • @elbaby2001

    @elbaby2001

    10 ай бұрын

    I am trying to remember their Nextel deal, I remember they try to push that as a business walkie talkie thing and Nextel was big in Mexico. Maybe sprint thought it was their way into the Mexican market?

  • @mk_vqz4086

    @mk_vqz4086

    10 ай бұрын

    Why do you use so many ellipses

  • @prendaloutto

    @prendaloutto

    10 ай бұрын

    I did love that chirp in class.

  • @mattyroc77

    @mattyroc77

    10 ай бұрын

    @prendaloutto Boy do I miss that chirp too..And ALWAYS had GREAT cell service too..And the phones were built like brick houses too!!!

  • @PongoXBongo
    @PongoXBongo10 ай бұрын

    I wish a current provider would resurect Nextel's push-to-talk functionality that basically turned your phone into a walkie talkie. That was super useful on remote jobsites when communicating with dispatch.

  • @RCToTheFuture

    @RCToTheFuture

    10 ай бұрын

    Apple has it on the Apple Watch, my wife and I use it all the time

  • @MarionStevensJr

    @MarionStevensJr

    10 ай бұрын

    Not a national provider, but Southern Linc still has this service in the Southeast. They used to use iDEN like Nextel, but they switched to LTE. The amount of spectrum they have is pretty small, so data is sliwer then the other carriers, but their coverage is amazing. If you lose signal, you're either in a cave, or the end of the world has occurred.

  • @eagledefenseusa4799
    @eagledefenseusa47994 ай бұрын

    I actually worked at Sprint so I've a unique perspective from the inside. It was fun at first, but not much over the years because although my performance was stellar, the management was terrible when it came to advancement. I simply quit. Always be on the lookout for your next job that pays more.

  • @SebisRandomTech
    @SebisRandomTech9 ай бұрын

    Great video! Now do one about the “South”(ern) Pacific Railroad :)

  • @Megasteel32
    @Megasteel3210 ай бұрын

    my family were sprint customers for over 20 years, and were grandfathered in on one of their amazing family plans from the early 2000's. we actually had an excellent experience both in the city and out of town, but totally aware that's a rare experience lol. should be noted my parents traveled for work alot, and the international service was really good.

  • @jasonswoger410

    @jasonswoger410

    10 ай бұрын

    I was on the very first family plan with sprint (my mom's plan). It was so good. We were on the plan until they literally called my mom to apologize and let her know they couldn't do it anymore, that was just a handful of years ago

  • @Megasteel32

    @Megasteel32

    10 ай бұрын

    @@jasonswoger410 yep same with us, with the T-Mobile takeover we got kicked off too.

  • @Seweveryday_

    @Seweveryday_

    10 ай бұрын

    Same experience here…was on a family plan since I was in early High school with my family. We got pretty good service most of the time and kept that same grandfathered plan until t mobile literally couldn’t do it anymore. I think that was only 2021 maybe or even last year.

  • @beverlyweber4122
    @beverlyweber412210 ай бұрын

    Former employee here...and Sprint USED TO be amazing (in the mid-90's). They were smart, incredibly wise, doing great, and then they just lost it in the early 2000s. Lost all focus and everything went to hell fast. I sold my stock as fast as I could thank God.

  • @mrstark1376
    @mrstark137610 ай бұрын

    The WiMax debacle was weird. The reason they didn't deploy a LTE solution was because it wasn't ready yet but the spectrum that sprint purchased from the government had to be used by a certain time or be forfeited (if I remember correctly). That's why soon after they had a WiMax and LTE network going at the same time.

  • @davidkasper4590

    @davidkasper4590

    9 ай бұрын

    They could have deployed just enough of it into their CDMA footprint just to protect their spectrum license. Kind of a shady thing to do when it isnt currently needed but all the companies did that to some degree.

  • @adamtajyar

    @adamtajyar

    5 ай бұрын

    No they ditched WiMAX in favor of LTE because WiMAX was a complete failure especially when carriers like AT&T and T-Mobile were transitioning from GSM to LTE and Verizon was phasing out CDMA for LTE. Only Verizon’s network for 3G was CDMA. LTE is a whole different network standard

  • @jamiedriscoll9781
    @jamiedriscoll978110 ай бұрын

    Fun fact, the yellow wing part of the logo follows the path of the "pin drop" when Sprint first came on the scene and they're motto was their connection was so clear you could hear a pin drop. Fund an early commercial. A pin drops, and it's path later becomes that yellow wing shape.

  • @brucesi
    @brucesi10 ай бұрын

    In the late 90s, Sprint was arguably the best carrier in the nation. By the mid 2000s, they seemed to fall in quality of network to Verizon, who still has the best network. But there was a time when everyone wanted a Sprint flip phone, like the Sanyo 8100.

  • @gabehall132
    @gabehall13210 ай бұрын

    I was a sprint customer for several years before the merger with T-Mobile, remained Sprint until they pushed me over as part of the merger.

  • @kbdadriftking

    @kbdadriftking

    10 ай бұрын

    Same here. I often had signal when no one else did. Eventually they sent me the T-Mobile sim and I didn't switch over until they started shutting down sprint towers and service got worse and worse.

  • @red5standingby419

    @red5standingby419

    10 ай бұрын

    @@kbdadriftking Well congrats, you're now on a much better service.

  • @angelachouinard4581

    @angelachouinard4581

    10 ай бұрын

    @@kbdadriftking Same here. No matter where I lived I never had signal trouble. Since T Mobile forced me onto their network I've had problems galore. I actually had a complete service outage at one point for several days, not my phone I had it checked, they "lost" me. Stupid customer service wanted to call me back on my phone and it turned on and gave me a no service mgs but they didn't seem to understand that.

  • @prendaloutto

    @prendaloutto

    10 ай бұрын

    My experience has been horrible, going into a T-mobile store, they tell me they cannot pull up my account because I am Sprint and refuse to help me. 😢 The phone has a T-Mobile SIM and they are taking my autopay.

  • @catzzara

    @catzzara

    10 ай бұрын

    @@red5standingby419 yea not in my experience. the only thing keeping me from switching is that its still my parents plan that im on and dont feel like going through the hassle of moving to my own plan and such. I went from consistently having full bars of 4glte everywhere i went in my city or while traveling, able to stream 4k video no problem to now im lucky if i have more than a few bars of anything and am able to stream spotify. i hate tmo so gd much...

  • @MikesAutoDetailing
    @MikesAutoDetailing10 ай бұрын

    Great video

  • @Csilva857
    @Csilva85710 ай бұрын

    I remember when sprint had the google voice connection standard and a few other cutting edge features. It was really something i think they were really trying. Something also to note about Nextel Merger is that the spectrum held by Nextel was worth a lot (low band) high building penetration but it did not reach far. Tmobile is in a good position to put all of that spectrum to good use as they are now offering 5G home connections. I would assume it will be leading the charge in the coming years something that Sprint coukd not do. Also i heard that the logo for the last Sprint logo was a pin dropping 📍.

  • @doorknob60
    @doorknob6010 ай бұрын

    I used Sprint for a couple years before the T-Mobile acquisition. They definitely had the worst of the 4 networks, but it worked well enough where I lived and I got on a really well priced plan. After the T-Mobile acquisition, I still have that plan grandfathered indefinitely ($30 unlimited) and now my service is a lot better, so worked out for me in the end haha.

  • @devizesolstice4617
    @devizesolstice461710 ай бұрын

    Omg their customer service was abhorrent!!! The issues I've had with them are beyond any other company I've dealt with.

  • @nate_vz
    @nate_vz10 ай бұрын

    Keep the informative videos coming. Been a long time subscriber and work in the telecom industry, 26 years, so I can relate. It shows how these seemingly bohemith companies are one boneheaded decision or aquisition away from becoming irrelevant. I'm old enough to remember when Sprint PCS hit the market in the mid 90s. I worked at Radio Shack then and we sold a massive amount of their phones. It was the first phone the common person could afford. There was NO CREDIT CHECK, you got THOUSANDS of minutes talk time per month, the phones were inexpensive or free, the network was SUPERIOR in that it was digital, a CDMA network. It was ENCRYPTED. Back then you could evesdrop on people's calls with a police scanner. Not with Sprint because it was digitally encrypted. I could go on. Sprint was hot sh*t when it first hit the market.

  • @candiejo3869
    @candiejo386910 ай бұрын

    The walkie talkie feature ttp was the best thing about sprint/nextel phones. I miss that so much. We used it all the time in the factory i worked at.

  • @GoogleDoesEvil
    @GoogleDoesEvil10 ай бұрын

    Sprint's big issue was using CDMA and WiMax instead of GSM and LTE. Even Verizon screwed up initially with that but with the 3G shutdown CDMA is now dead.

  • @SimuLord

    @SimuLord

    10 ай бұрын

    I worked in the industry in the mid-aughts and there were real debates going on about which was the better format between CDMA and GSM. Reminded me of the HD-DVD vs. BluRay competition going on at the same time. Friends of mine who had Verizon insisted that their network was better than Cingular's.

  • @crabring

    @crabring

    10 ай бұрын

    Curious why that is? What's the difference?

  • @PinkAgaricus

    @PinkAgaricus

    10 ай бұрын

    This was along the lines of what I was going to say. Also Verizon and Sprint couldn't be used with most manufacturer unlocked phones because of the network technology.

  • @Elajt550

    @Elajt550

    10 ай бұрын

    5G us what it's all about now.

  • @Elajt550

    @Elajt550

    10 ай бұрын

    ​@SimuLord Both too old now 5G with mmWaves are what's most commonly used in countries with good infrastructure.

  • @MORGBORGTech
    @MORGBORGTech10 ай бұрын

    As a phone collector/enthusiast, I can say that Sprint had some phenomenal phones back in the day. However, I can confidently say that they would've been my last choice for cell phone service. If they cared more about their customers when they were around, they could've probably been in a much better position and maybe even still around today.

  • @Spencerwalker21

    @Spencerwalker21

    10 ай бұрын

    I switched from a TMobile Walmart plan it was 100 minutes but unlimited data and text for 30. I saw news of a Sprint promotion that just started that day it was called unlimited Kickstart unlimited data text and call for 20$ immediately switched that day thank God because 2 days later sprint ended the week long promotion. T-Mobile bought out sprint so back to TMobile lol and I'm losing autopay discount because I pay with credit card that has cell phone insurance as well so now it's 25$ I can't complain great deal. So I guess I'll always thank sprint for that plan.

  • @rowlaanbennett7296
    @rowlaanbennett729610 ай бұрын

    I didn’t even remember that Classic pin drop commercial from the 90s until watching it 😮 classic era

  • @CheveeDodd
    @CheveeDodd10 ай бұрын

    I live in a state where Sprint was hands down the best carrier for anyone leaving the metropolitan areas. I was a happy customer for 20 years and was sad to see it go, but T-Mobile has been fantastic.

  • @corrinarobinson7078
    @corrinarobinson707810 ай бұрын

    Feels like there should have been at least some mention of the Embarq spin off causing the company some serious trauma. For reference, I was working for Sprint Nextel when the landline division was spun off to make Embarq. We who ended up in Embarq always marvelled at how Sprint Nextel basically crippled itself by letting itself get divided up like it was. And even though Embarq went on to get bought a few times over(Centurylink, Lumen) the parts of the company went on to be a major player in both front and back end telecommunications.

  • @justinwilliams2522
    @justinwilliams252210 ай бұрын

    Bad cell service Too expensive Bad customer service The list goes on

  • @juarsenal998
    @juarsenal9986 ай бұрын

    One of my first jobs was at a Sprint Call Center. It was one of the worst companies I've ever worked for. I was shocked by how dificult it was to defend the company against complaints or disenrollment requests. The pay was also terrible.

  • @mathewmclean9128
    @mathewmclean912810 ай бұрын

    Interesting! I did not know Sprint was an acronym. I just thought they called themselves Sprint because once you have them for a while, you'll be sprinting to a different carrier.

  • @tylerwynn6905
    @tylerwynn690510 ай бұрын

    I had Sprint around 2010-2012 and loved it! It was one of the first to offer unlimited data and it was amazing. Always missed it!

  • @red5standingby419

    @red5standingby419

    10 ай бұрын

    I don't get it... they continued to exist after 2012, why did you not use them anymore if you "always missed it"?

  • @ericdodson3630

    @ericdodson3630

    10 ай бұрын

    @@red5standingby419 i'm going to assume, they meant that's around the time they started with Sprint.

  • @tylerwynn6905

    @tylerwynn6905

    10 ай бұрын

    @@red5standingby419was on a family plan. We used to bounce around to different providers based on who had good deals at the time. Wasn’t all up to me lol

  • @byrons8956
    @byrons895610 ай бұрын

    I remember my short time dealing with MCI, Nextel, and Sprint. With my time using Sprint, I couldn’t drop them fast enough since it was so horrible.

  • @thetechnerdd4712
    @thetechnerdd47127 ай бұрын

    Sprints downfall was the choice to use Wi-max rather than GSM when beginning their build out of a Data network later choosing to side with Verizon in using CDMA for its 3G left them unable to effectively compete during the boom of the emergence of smart devices like the sidekicks and Nokia n800s, etc. By the time they were able to begin building a better & further reaching network using a newer tech at the time called LTE for their 4G network it was too late they didn't have the money needed to overhaul their network gear to increase speeds and coverage. This left them with lots of great spectrum (radio frequencies) but no money to use it. Which made them a great investment for another cell company to be able to use their spectrum to add capacity to their own network

  • @editorick
    @editorick10 ай бұрын

    Sprint was one of my first cell phone carriers in the early 90's. At some point they changed their network and the old phones no longer worked. I received a $50 gift card for a phone that would work on the new network but had moved on to Verizon at that point. I started freelancing for Sprint at their headquarters in Reston, VA in 2000 about 3 months before they downsized from the 7 building campus to move to Kansas as a cost saving measure.

  • @KCFlyer2

    @KCFlyer2

    10 ай бұрын

    Sprints headquarters has been in Kansas for decades. They built a massive complex in Overland Park Kansas and tried to centralize there. That complex was big enough to require it's own zip code

  • @CamdenBloke

    @CamdenBloke

    10 ай бұрын

    I work for RadioShack in the late nineties, and we sold both Sprint PCS and cellular one. Sprint made a big deal out of how their network was a proprietary Network and was not the same as cellular. When description was set on cellular networks you had either analog or digital. On analog anyone who'll listen in with the right kind of radio. On digital, the signals were encoded but not actually encrypted. But that on Sprint PCS Network the signals were digital and encrypted and they changed the encryption code however many times per minute or whatever. When I got a Sprint PCS phone on the employee plan, I always referred to it as a wireless phone instead of a cellular phone because of the way Sprint have made such a big deal out of house Sprint PCS is not cellular.

  • @Winston0Boogie

    @Winston0Boogie

    10 ай бұрын

    I remember this. One day my phone was completely cut from service and was told they were switching to digital and getting ready to ditch analog phones. When I told them I needed a phone they told me to just buy one of their many digital phones. Omg I was so pissed.

  • @divingdays
    @divingdays10 ай бұрын

    Being military sprint was the best option. Got great coverages almost anywhere military bases are during a time when all other phone companies had terrible services. Plus being able to deploy and still utilize my phone while everyone else had to get local foreign area SIM cards or whatever I got to continue with my current plan with no interruption.

  • @kossttamojaan

    @kossttamojaan

    9 ай бұрын

    15 years with Sprint and never had an issue. Not one. Until T-Mobile took over.

  • @frankfrati4
    @frankfrati47 ай бұрын

    This is all I know of Sprint/nextel. Every time I tried to call my friend about 90% of the time I would hear "please hold while the Nextel customer you're trying to reach is located".

  • @stuffedninja1337
    @stuffedninja13375 ай бұрын

    Sprint represents a weird nostalgia for me. The first person in my household to have a cell phone was my dad, a contractor, who every weekday would drive down to a local college over the state border and fix things that frat boys broke. He needed a cheap, reliable, no-bells-or-whistles phone. So he got something through either Boost Mobile or Sprint. And he had that carrier for the better part of two decades, no complaints, since it did what he needed it to, and the phone itself (some kind of Nokia) could handle the construction environment. We’re very much an “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” kind of family, so I’d say he was satisfied with it till he switched to using smartphones. He uses AT&T like the rest of us now.

  • @richaellr
    @richaellr10 ай бұрын

    I used to work for Sprint here in MA. There was a trick some sales reps did to make more commission: At the time, you got paid more for new lines of service than for upgrading existing lines. What they did was added a new line to get the "new line promo", then advised the customer to cancel their existing number through customer service. The customer was happy for getting the new promo, and the rep got more comission. It was called the Rhode Island Flip-Flop. Many higher ups were booted after HQ found out about this.

  • @johndelong7795

    @johndelong7795

    10 ай бұрын

    Sounds a lot l8ke the "Albany Ham Scam".

  • @bertooo1358

    @bertooo1358

    10 ай бұрын

    This is so true I used to work for sprint and wow we would take advantage of the new line things but T-Mobile stopped it after the merger for the most part

  • @firepoet6926

    @firepoet6926

    10 ай бұрын

    I’m pretty sure this still happens to some extent cause in a recent call with AT&T I was told I needed a new number and a later employee told me the previous employee was pulling shenanigans

  • @tinmahanb

    @tinmahanb

    10 ай бұрын

    Don’t forget about the Sprint phone connect flip flop 😂

  • @jmcmonster
    @jmcmonster10 ай бұрын

    I grew up in rural Michigan and NEXTEL was huge. Other than local wireless carriers (centennial wireless was what I had at one point) that only covered a few counties in my state, they were one of the few that had coverage about everywhere. Once Sprint took over, basically everybody bailed. I did have Sprint for a number of years once I moved out of state, but switched to AT&T because CDMA didn’t work when I traveled internationally.

  • @andrewmaximo4485

    @andrewmaximo4485

    10 ай бұрын

    My first cell phone was a nextel with the chirp "walky-talky" feature that was one cent a minute during certain hours.

  • @johndelong7795
    @johndelong779510 ай бұрын

    2013 was the year that the company I work for had to stop using the Nextel "push to talk" phones to communicate with techs in the field because they went from working great to barely working at all. From that point on we just started calling each other's personal cell phones to communicate. Now I understand why that breakdown happened.

  • @Turtlejohn8
    @Turtlejohn88 ай бұрын

    I used to live in North Kansas City as a kid. It seems like everybody had a parent who worked at Sprint. It's wild that they just don't exist anymore

  • @justinjones5296
    @justinjones529610 ай бұрын

    I went to high school in Overland Park, Kansas less than a mile away from the gigantic "Sprint Campus" right around the time it was being built....I used to take girls and park in the parking garages and look at the stars and dream!!! We would talk about how good this campus was for our families and community, how many jobs it would create, and how it would be awesome to work for Sprint when we grew up like a lot of our friends parents!! That was back in 2001....now i am 40 years old and inherited my parents house in the same neighborhood. I am still to this day paying taxes on the building and maintenance of the now T-Mobile Campus which almost nobody works at because there are too many buildings and too much infrastructure for 1 tech company....

  • @DelPiero2004

    @DelPiero2004

    10 ай бұрын

    I don't know why I thought it was going to be a hanky panky story, slightly disappointed

  • @jjohnson9707

    @jjohnson9707

    10 ай бұрын

    I was thinking too like go to the parking garage and you know

  • @casualsuede

    @casualsuede

    10 ай бұрын

    I work at the campus and it is not the t-mobile campus, there are a dozen companies here and t-mobile only occupies 5-6 buildings of the 15 that are here.

  • @chrisdavis743

    @chrisdavis743

    10 ай бұрын

    I’ve done a lot of work out there (signage) and it’s now like a ghost town compared to the “hay day”.

  • @jacobrobinson923
    @jacobrobinson92310 ай бұрын

    Waiting for the rise fall and rise again video of Company Man

  • @m8rs558
    @m8rs5585 ай бұрын

    I remember making my first grade teacher laugh when she asked us what "sprint" means and I raised mg hand and said "a place where you get phones." Sad that future generations can never have this experience

  • @muftiabdullahshah2574
    @muftiabdullahshah25742 ай бұрын

    Wow amazing video very nice video ❤❤

  • @dwood78part23
    @dwood78part2310 ай бұрын

    While I never used Sprint, they were a part of my childhood. & was a bit sad to see the brand disappear after it's merger with T-Mobile.

  • @ViceCityTree

    @ViceCityTree

    10 ай бұрын

    I miss sprint stadium in kansas city

  • @jkirk1626

    @jkirk1626

    10 ай бұрын

    Learn to use apostrophes correctly. It's means it is. Fail.

  • @quanbrooklynkid7776

    @quanbrooklynkid7776

    10 ай бұрын

    Yea

  • @holker_

    @holker_

    10 ай бұрын

    @@jkirk1626bro stfu, nobody cares. I bet you’re real fun at parties

  • @DaveAdams222
    @DaveAdams22210 ай бұрын

    I remember back in like . . .2015 wondering how Sprint was still in business. I'm surprised they lasted as long as they did.

  • @deancameron8378
    @deancameron837810 ай бұрын

    I worked for sprint customer service , tech support and account retention from 2006 - 2016 ... Nextel and Wimax I feel killed the brand ... they banked to heavily on those investments and rode the train to long before they admitted it failed ...The HTC Evo was a hit arguably a trend setter hindered by wimax ... also CDMA could not compete with GSM phones that could do both voice and data simultaneously while CDMA was stuck to either ...

  • @CWA2400
    @CWA24008 ай бұрын

    I'm nodding my head in agreement. I was a Sprint customer for about 10 years and saw their wireless network come up short. Calls were dropping regularly and they had the worst customer service, which is why I switched.

  • @stansoffthewall
    @stansoffthewall10 ай бұрын

    My first smartphone was the HTC Evo on the Sprint network, and there was a time that phone was all the rage with my friend circle at the time. Sprint also had the original Samsung Galaxy at the same time…I thought their phone selection was topnotch. Service seemed decent back then, too! So sad they destroyed themselves.

  • @danwake4431

    @danwake4431

    10 ай бұрын

    Evo was my first android. I actually held off on getting it for a couple months because it was HUGE and coming from a Palm Pre I was like im not carrying that gigantic brick everywhere! lol but eventually i couldnt resist.

  • @DaganSauceda
    @DaganSauceda10 ай бұрын

    In 2015 I switched to Sprint because they were the only ones that offered unlimited data at no additional charge and also had a promo for an iPad. Service was fine in most popular cities, but outside of those cities, you got nothing. There was no reason to keep them once all competitors started offering unlimited data for no extra charge.

  • @Tylnorton
    @Tylnorton7 ай бұрын

    Sprint was very expensive and they had terrible service in much of the US. They went from being the biggest sponsor in NASCAR to being acquired by T-Mobile just over 3 years. My dad used to work for Sprint as a sales director/marketing. He made friends along the way when it was still called Sprint PCS. He eventually left in January 2008 shortly after his boss left and switched to Metro PCS. He's now working for GN under Blue Parrot-Jabra.

  • @Orlando2022
    @Orlando202210 ай бұрын

    We had been with Sprint since 1998. Never had any issues with the service or customer service. Since merged with T-mobile, we still have our plan from Sprint, which doesn't exist in any carriers today, and it serves our needs very well. I guess we fall in that category of customers who actually had a great experience with the Sprint.

  • @jeromewhite7681

    @jeromewhite7681

    10 ай бұрын

    I still have my same plan as well

  • @Elfking94

    @Elfking94

    10 ай бұрын

    Same, started in 2016 and iv actually had impressive coverage indirectly with Mint now. For the price I'll never complain

  • @AdamFrugoli

    @AdamFrugoli

    10 ай бұрын

    So you’re not the one 🎉😂

  • @Foreign84

    @Foreign84

    10 ай бұрын

    T mobile brought them lol. It was never a merge 😂

  • @fjcruisefjcruise4527

    @fjcruisefjcruise4527

    7 ай бұрын

    I like T MOBILE ❤ THEY REMIND ME OF THE OLD DAYS OF SPINT BY SERVICE

  • @CubsFan2812
    @CubsFan281210 ай бұрын

    There was a period of time in the mid 2010s where Sprint sales people at the mall had the most high pressure, aggressive sales tactics I've ever seen. They literally would get in shoppers faces, and try everything they could to get you to switch to Sprint right there and then. They had these pathetic rebuttals memorized everytime you told them you weren't interested. I've been in sales my entire life and these guys were the worst of the worst. On the other hand, I haven't seen a cellular company set up a booth in a mall in forever