Once again, the malformed brains who guide the course at Sprint have pushed one step further to leaving the cellular business market in the United States. They don’t think that is what they are doing, but it is - they have malformed brains, you know.

Last year, the first volley in their war to quit business was to ‘fire’ certain customers - the ones who had the temerity to demand quality service from the company.

The newest salvo has the Sprint unlimited service being capped at 5GB per month. The folks at Sprint don’t seem to have a good grasp of the English language here, as the last time I went to a dictionary, the word unlimited meant ‘without limits’.  To make things worse, these people must have something in their water causing mass memory loss,  as most of the television viewing public still remember the ‘nice man’ on television, telling us about  the ‘new Sprint’, and how he wanted to hear our ideas for making the company, and network, better. I’m almost certain no one called in, or wrote how reneging on the promise of UNLIMITED SERVICE would be a good way to bolster the mindshare of Sprint.

from Betanews

A number of Sprint mobile broadband users have shown their disgust over an internal memo that indicated the company has placed a cap on its mobile broadband service.

In an e-mail and phone correspondence with BetaNews, Sprint officials discussed the reasoning behind its decision to implement a 5 GB per month overall use cap, and 300 MB per month for off-network roaming.

"Sprint is continually working to ensure a great customer experience that is available to all of its customers. Efficiently managing our wireless network is a big part of our commitment," a Sprint spokesperson told us. "The use of voice and data roaming by a small minority of customers is generating a disproportionately large level of operating expense for the company. We are enforcing the existing terms and conditions for phone plans. We are placing a limit of 300 MB per month on the amount of data use allowed while roaming off network as well as a 5 GB per month limitation on total wireless data usage for Sprint’s connection and phone as modem plans."

"This limit is well within the range of what a typical customer would normally use each month." Sprint declined to disclose the amount of data a "typical customer" uses per month.

Yes, after the mass exit of customers, the remaining idiots will have truly great quality of service - provided the company is still in business.  The last time I checked there was a concept called network maintenance, and it took a lot of money…

Unconfirmed reports earlier in the day inaccurately stated Sprint put the cap in place to help make a transition towards the future, in which it plans to launch its WiMAX 4G network before the end of the year. Assuming its Xohm WiMAX network can launch in Baltimore and Washington, DC as scheduled, Sprint will beat out both Verizon Wireless and AT&T, which plan to launch their 4G networks in 2009.

The company is now making an "extensive effort" to inform its customers about the pending changes, and to allow them to "change their usage habits before exploring any available options under the terms and conditions."

From my own experience working as a Sprint representative, the manager of a Radio Shack, I can say that ‘extensive effort’ is Sprint-speak for a small notation in 6 point type on their next bill.

Existing customers are being notified about the change through messages attached to their bills that Sprint began mailing three days ago. The changes take effect 30 days upon receipt of the note. Starting in June, company officials will call customers to ensure they understand the changes made and to help better identify when they are roaming.

Roaming - it’s hard to tell when and not roaming, as the network is so bad a car moving along the road in many places will lose and gain signal many times - and this is in California, I can just imagine how it is in ‘West Fencepost, Wyoming’ or some similar place.

the only thing missing from the picture is the jar of Vaseline

Yes, it will be nice to see the thinning of the herd, and don’t fret, some other company will pick up WiMax.

Carl Icahn needs to use the effort put forth on Yahoo and Microsoft on Sprint instead - maybe he could come up with something. I doubt it, as this company has had greed and indifference to its customers as its watchwords since its inception.

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[tags] Sprint, unlimited service, customer indifference, breach of contract, service problems, poor network performance, roaming, ‘typical customer’, Carl Icahn [/tags]