Sprint Nextel Corp. (NYSE: S) really does no worse compared to all the other major national wireless carriers, in my opinion. The company offers several cutting-edge wireless handsets, was one of the very first to offer 3G wireless data (and offers excellent pricing on those services) and has a solid brand behind it. What Sprint Nextel does not have includes a strong consumer message, a customer service quality-oriented reputation or the subscriber growth enjoyed by its larger competitors, AT&T, Inc. (NYSE: T) and Verizon Communications, Inc.'s (NYSE: VZ) Verizon Wireless. Oh yeah, Sprint and Nextel are still two different companies. Well, from a pundit's viewpoint, that is.
When Sprint announced it was merging with Nextel over two years ago, many a watcher were probably wondering how two companies that focused on completely different customer bases and with completely incompatible wireless technologies were going to fare as one unit. Well, it's two years later, and current Sprint Nextel chief Gary Foresee is now saying they are about 80% done blending the two companies together. Maybe we'll see 100% sometime at the start of 2009.
The merger was probably seen as a survival move against the new, larger kids on the block back in 2005, as Verizon was creeping up as the largest kid on the block and the then-Cingular was rumored to maybe merge with AT&T, which happened and closed earlier this year. Other than an instinctual move, Sprint Nextel was a bungled merger right from the start, and in 24 months it is still in progress. Walk into a Sprint store and both Sprint and Nextel products are kept separate, as are many other things between the two brands.
First order of business for Sprint in 2005 should have been handsets that worked on both the Sprint and Nextel networks and a complete combining of the company into a single brand presentation to the customer. This did not happen, and still has not happened. As priorities shifted away from Nextel's customer base and onto Sprint's case, former (and fiercely loyal) Nextel customers left in droves, giving the company the opposite effect of what it wanted: less rather than more customers.
Sprint has a terrific brand history (although the current picture is muddled), and if it can get through the Nextel nightmare some time next year, perhaps the architects of the merger will begin to see the fruits of what was conceived in 2005. Until then, it may have to flail its arms wildly a bit longer, much to the chagrin of Foresee.
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