Sprint is offering free unlimited calls and data for more than a year to try to win customers from rivals. There are no major catches, but a big ulterior motive.
The deal isn’t being widely promoted and is mainly being directly marketed to known Verizon customers. However, it appears the emphasis on Verizon is merely because that makes the savings estimates look best: the deal is actually open to any new Sprint customer who brings their own unlocked phone.
Customers get unlimited data, voice calls and texts, with 10GB a month of mobile hotspot tethering (after which the tethering reverts to 2G speeds.) A fair use policy means Sprint could “deprioritize” your data use during busy periods if you exceed 23GB in a month.
There’s a $30 activation fee that’s refunded after two months, so the only money customers will pay is $2.99 to buy a SIM, $2.39 a month in admin and regulatory fees, and then any local taxes. By default customers will have online billing with AutoPay and switching to paper billing and/paying manually will incur extra fees.
The deadline for signing up is the end of this month. The free service then continues until 31 July 2018, after which customers can switch to a standard unlimited deal or walk away without further charges.
Only specific handsets are covered. The full list is at the website for the offer, but the short version is that it’s most models of the iPhone, Nexus, Pixel, and Galaxy handsets along with several Motorola handsets. You can upgrade to a new handset from Sprint after four months: service will remain free but you’ll have to pay the appropriate handset costs, whether that be buying it outright up front or paying monthly instalments.
Why Sprint is making such an offer is open to question. The company itself says it’s simply a way to win over new customers who’ll likely become long-term customers. It says offering the deal to online signups only cuts out a lot of acquisition costs and notes that in many cases the cost of winning new customers through paid advertising and in-store staff can often exceed the revenue it gets from a customer in the first year.
What Sprint didn’t mention is that it’s exploring some sort of merger or takeover with T-Mobile, which could be a tough sell to competition regulators. Offering free service to win over customers certainly helps counter the idea that the market isn’t competitive enough right now to withstand having fewer major players.