John Legere definitely has charisma and personality that can’t be beat. Since taking over as T-Mobile USA’s CEO he’s turned the wireless industry on it’s head. First he eliminated long term contracts, then early termination fees, he’s made equipment easier to purchase and even gives away data for music streaming.
Enter Sprint’s new CEO Marcelo Claure, a stuffy corporate guy who doesn’t even seem to have the friendly, guy next door, demeanor that his predecessor Dan Hesse had. He won’t be making the brazen moves that Legere has made like crashing an AT&T developer conference party at CES to see his friends Macklemore, or holding his own Mackelmore concert a couple months later.
There’s only one place that Sprint will be able to fight T-Mobile and that may be the one place that counts the most, in the wallet.
On Thursday Claure introduced a no strings attached $60 unlimited plan. That’s unlimited talk, text and data for $20 less than T-Mobile’s similar offering. Sprint’s network needs some major improvements though, many customers have left the third largest carrier in the country, and when they did it was to join T-Mobile.
What many tech sites won’t tell you is that after AT&T’s failed bid for T-Mobile, they had to pay Big Magenta $4 billion dollars which T-Mobile invested right back into their network. Well now, Sprint is going to have to do the same thing after failing to close an acquisition deal with T-Mobile as well. With a few extra billion dollars in his arsenal there’s no telling what Legere will do.