With merger talks over for now, Sprint focuses on upgrading its network

Wait. Stop what you're doing for a second and listen to that unusual sound. Know what its is? It is the sound of common sense returning to the mobile carrier business. Sprint CEO Marcelo Claure said today that there won't be many carrier promotions involving the Apple iPhone X. Why? Because inventories of the device are low and demand is high, it wouldn't make sense for U.S. carriers to give up some of its profit margins when it is not necessary to do so.

Claure says that promotional deals for the tenth anniversary model will be fewer and less aggressive than seen for the iPhone 7 last year. Still, some carriers are offering $300 off the iPhone X with a trade-in. The executive says that Sprint will have a strong fourth quarter thanks to heavy demand for the iPhone X.

Sprint's CEO also got to touch on the reason why the Sprint-T-Mobile merger talks broke down. Claure confirmed that the major issue that caused the talks to collapse was the demand made by SoftBank CEO and Sprint Chairman Masayoshi Son to have control of the combined company. The broad outline of the deal reportedly agreed to by both sides had T-Mobile parent Deutsche Telekom owning a majority of the merged carrier, with T-Mobile president and CEO John Legere running the newly formed operator.

Now that it seems apparent Sprint will be calling its own shots, Claure says that the company will spit and polish its pipeline, upgrading its network at a cost in excess of $5 to $6 billion a year. Sprint has a treasure trove of high-frequency spectrum in the 2.5GHz frequency band.

source: CNET