Sprint plans to make a significant move Wednesday in what has become an endless series of pricing battles among the major mobile carriers, especially Sprint and T-Mobile.
Sprint CEO Marcelo Claure Plans Big Price Move on Wednesday
The move comes even as Sprint seeks to cut $2 billion in costs.
Asa Mathat for Re/code
It’s not totally clear just what Sprint has up its sleeve, but it’s enough to have CEO Marcelo Claure so excited he can barely contain himself on Twitter.
Claure tweeted a picture of himself and a team of Sprint co-workers on Saturday, saying he had just finished a planning meeting on the announcement. He then followed that up with a tweet pointing to a countdown clock on Sprint’s website.
“The other carriers are not going to like this … guaranteed,” he said.
Sources said it’s not just your typical add-a-tablet promotion, nor is Sprint giving all its phone customers a hotspot, but there are still lots of other things Sprint could try. One source described the announcement as “big … very big,” but would not say more.
Just last week, rival T-Mobile presented the latest in its “uncarrier” promotions, announcing it would allow customers to stream unlimited video at near-DVD resolution from a number of leading video services. It also doubled the amount of data included in many subscription tiers, while slightly upping the prices for those monthly plans.
Much of the recent battle among the major carriers has been over core smartphone customers, but connected devices are one of the fastest growing areas in wireless, with much of AT&T’s recent growth having come from tablets, cars and other devices.
One of the big questions will be how expensive this pricing plan will be for Sprint, which has been looking to cut $2 billion in costs even as it tries to woo customers from rival carriers. The company is expected to announce significant layoffs before Jan. 30.
Sprint has raised its rates on unlimited data while offering new low-cost plans for individuals as well as shared-data family plans. The company has also been trying to aggressively improve its network — long seen as the weakest of the four major carriers. Claure has vowed to be No. 1 or No. 2 in 80 percent of markets by 2017.
On Tuesday, Sprint posted a blog entry touting its early work in that effort and branding as its “LTE Plus network” the 77 markets where it currently has networks that have added support for the 2.5GHz spectrum that Sprint acquired through its Clearwire acquisition.
Sprint said devices that support that spectrum band can see peak speeds in excess of 100 megabits per second. Sprint has touted its 2.5GHz holdings as among the reasons it won’t be bidding in next year’s spectrum auction.
A Sprint representative declined to comment further on the company’s pricing plan announcement.
This article originally appeared on Recode.net.
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