After more than two years of pushing the promotion, Sprint is reportedly preparing to end its offer to cut 50% off the bill of customers who switch to Sprint from rivals like AT&T and Verizon.
The Wall Street Journal reported the news, citing Wave7 Research. In its report, Wave7 wrote that the promotion will be discontinued tomorrow. Sprint declined to comment on the move to the WSJ.
Wave7 also noted in its report that, concurrent with the end of the promotion, Sprint is also essentially following T-Mobile’s One strategy by removing most of its tiered data options and pushing only its unlimited data plans.
“Our understanding is that a 40 GB tier (likely business-focused) will be retained,” the firm wrote.
Sprint has long promoted its 50% off campaign, arguing that it could offer service at half the cost of its competitors. The carrier first launched the offer in December 2014. However, that offer has little relevance as the wireless industry moves back into an unlimited data paradigm. Both Sprint and T-Mobile have long offered unlimited data, but AT&T and Verizon recently joined the game with their own unlimited data options.
Sprint’s current unlimited data offer costs $60 per month for one line of service, which is $10 less than what T-Mobile charges. It’s also $20 below Verizon’s $80 price for one line of service, and fully $30 less than AT&T’s $90-per-month price tag. Sprint is also currently running a promotion that removes $10 from the price of its unlimited plans, bringing the cost of a single line of service down to $50 per month.
Moreover, Sprint has managed to make some headway in the market, at least in terms of scoring new customers. The carrier’s shares popped in January after it reported 368,000 postpaid phone net additions during a particularly competitive fourth quarter. Sprint’s net operating revenues came in at $8.5 billion during the period too, marking more than 5% year-over-year growth, and its net loss of $479 million was a marked improvement over the $836 million net loss it recorded a year ago.
However, Sprint is expected to report sluggish first-quarter results along with the rest of the wireless industry.
Although Sprint appears to be bringing an end to its half off promotion, its rivals aren’t standing still. Just today AT&T announced that it will offer HBO free to customers who subscribe to its $90 per month Unlimited Plus data plan.