Mountain View Cellphones

By www.mountainviewcellphones.com 10/31/2009

Happy Halloween Everyone.  I wanted to dedicate this blog to all the businesses out there losing money by not using Sprint.

Sprint has the best plans for the bottom line and the best network for the money.  Verizon and ATT customers are spending on average about 20% more per month and per year for wireless communications.  For an iPhone using company, spending is about 30-40% more for similar services.

There are several unique features that Sprint has for businesses.

Read the rest of this entry »

by www.mountainviewcellphones.com

Sprint recently introduced a great loyalty and a great program for new customers.  It’s the Sprint Premier program.  This is the best program in the world for loyal customers that spend more than $69.99/month on cell phone service and families spending more than $99.99/month.

Some great advantages:

1.  Equipment upgrades for the primary line EVERY YEAR.

2.  Promos and coupons to save more.

3.  Advance notice of products and new services.

4.  Entry to special contests to win more prizes.

5.  Sprint plan optimizer to change your plan without contract extension.

This is a great deal.  A new phone every year at the lowest prices for the best and higher paying customers.  Fabulous.

This is unmatched by ATT, Verizon, and T-mobile.  In fact, I’m kind of worried as to how they are going to pay for all these new phones.

There is a small catch…you need to have a stellar payment history to qualify and have plans that are high enough.

3/13/2009  by www.mountainviewcellphones.com

Clearwire announced their anticipated rollout of the WiMax network in the coming years.  I did some numbers to quantify the estimated population that will be covered by its roll out (beyond Portland and Baltimore).  Given the coverage maps from the website, the network areas extend beyond the city proper so I took the metropolitan area population estimates (data from Wikipedia).

Existing Markets: 10.1MM

Portland 2,000,000

Baltimore   2,600,000

Seattle  3,263,497

Honolulu  371,657

Charlotte 1,897,034

This year growth:  26.6MM

Atlanta  5,278,000

Chicago 9,500,000

Philadelphia 5,800,000

Las Vegas  1,986,146

Dallas/Ft. Worth 6,100,000

Next year growth:  35.8MM

New York  18,815,988

Boston  4,400,000

San Francisco  7,000,000

Washington DC  5,300,000

Houston 5,600,000

Now, I could be underestimating some areas, but we have about 72.6MM from Wikipedia numbers for the surrounding metropolitan areas of these cities by 2010 announced.  They have many other smaller cities already lit up from the previous Clearwire, so we can add about another 10.0MM to be generous and about another 5.0MM in yet to be announced locations, and we get about 87.6MM people covered.  This is still behind the 120MM announced by 2010, so I think there must be more cities to be announced at the end of 2009 when they have some data about their progress to see test the rate of expansion.

What’s also important to notice about their plans is that they are targeting the large regional areas for service.  For domestic business, people travel to and from these major regions so they will have cover at the destination.

Though the numbers currently don’t add up to their press release, I think the roll-out is still to early to predict.  The roll-out could be much faster if the adoption rate of the Wi-Max service was much faster than anticipated.  Given the great rates and mobility offered by this solution, it has the chance to be the sole Internet provider to many customers and to take away business from DSL service in hoards.  This is especially true for small businesses that are held captive to DSL service where cable doesn’t reach (we happen to be such an operation currently but we are not alone, we have a phone number we don’t use just for DSL service).

Provided we are in a recession/depression, a conservative roll-out plan is the wise business strategy and to match cash burn with cash flow as much as possible is reassuring.

Lastly, their balanced roll-out will be necessary to keep device manufacturers interested in providing WiMax devices.  Broadband data cards are a great first start and should be able to carry the business for 1 year, but beyond this, we should be expecting devices that leverage the new bandwidth in innovative ways…that SKYPE/Google Voice mobile phone?

2/25/2009 www.mountainviewcellphones.com

In many ways, the carrier has an internal tow truck service for customers.  When the customers don’t have the right plan for, exceed their plans, and/or share their phones with ignorant family users, it’s very much like getting your car towed or ticketed.

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2/22/2009 www.mountainviewcellphones.com

There are many people who fear “contracts.”  It’s silly.  The carrier gives you money and you as the consumer don’t take it.  Sorry…on this consumers are just dumb.

Here are the reasons why this argument about not signing a contract doesn’t hold up.

1.  You can get out of the contract anytime if you pay $200.  Namely, give back the money the carrier gave you upfront for the hardware discount.

2.  You get the money again in 2 years (in some instances every year).

3.  You can sell your phone.  Yes, this hardware has a market value.

4.  If you just want a 1 year contract, go buy the equipment “used” or “new” on the open market and then just activate it with any carrier you want.

But consumers want everything, convenience, cheap phones, cheap plans, full 100% service, and no contract commitments.  This give away is financially impossible for any carrier.

If your a commitment “phobic”, you just have to ask yourself one question.  Will you be using a cell phone 2 years from now?  If the answer is “yes,”  sign the contract with the carrier of choice.

Every carrier provides 30 days to return the phone and not have any contract obligation.  Sure there is some trouble involved by the consumer to get this done (making a 20 minute phone call to the cancellation department), but it shouldn’t even be a consideration as you get the money for the contract upfront and the carrier doesn’t make the money back for 6 months.  This is 6 months of value transfer from the carrier to the consumer.

With the major carriers, you are paying for customer service, coverage, phone innovation, phone services, solution determination, AND some flexibility.  Sure you can sign up with MetroPCS, but when you need help, do they have a service and repair center nearby to help like Sprint?

As the phone hardware you purchase can be resold this provides another reason to sign the contract.  Namely, if you buy a smartphone, you are generally getting a lot more money off the phone than the $200 termination fee.  So if you resold it within 1.0 years, you can recover the $200 if you keep the phone in good condition.  Most other phones, you can get at least $100-$200 for mid line phones.  So, you can get your money back for most phones.  If you get the free phone, you won’t recover the value back in the secondary market.

In summary,

1.  The $200+ you get up front, you can make it up (some or all) on the back end thru equipment sales.

2.  You get the money again in 2 years for another 2 year contract to get new equipment.

3.  If you’re going to use a cell phone anyway, why not get a better phone to use and pay less.

4.  You are just giving the money back the carrier gave you upfront.  So, in reality, you are ahead for the period of time you took the money before you give it back.

2/16/2009  www.mountainviewcellphones.com

For the professional who uses their wireless technology for their lives.  This is the power user plan of choice.

Everything on your phone (unlimited minutes, data, email, GPS, texting, TV, radio, etc…) and 5GB usage on wireless broadband for $149.99/month.  This is a $10/month discount on the broadband wireless card ($49.99/month vs. $59.99/month regular price).  This package versus comparable packages with ATT & Verizon saves over $480/year.

This is the best deal in town, hands down.

If you think 5GB limit on wireless broadband is bad, you can read the fine print with Verizon and ATT and quickly figure out that Sprint is about 5.0x-9.0x less expensive for overages.

Here are data overages after 5GB for major data carriers.

Sprint = $0.05/MB

Verizon = $0.25/MB

ATT = $0.49/MB

For mobile broadband value.  Sprint is #1.

2/16/2009  www.mountainviewcellphones.com

Palm released some great updates today on the anticipated Palm PRE.  Some cool video of what it can do.  The two core elements are the further development of Mojo SDK (software development kit) for WebOS and the showing of the UMTS version in Europe.

Apple changed the game…and Palm will give them a race for the money.  This is seriously an epic business story of Apple vs. Apple.  The teacher now faced with his former apprentice for mastery of the mobile smartphone market.  Read the rest of this entry »

It’s coming.  I’m not sure on the implementation date but from what I recall it’s going to be 6 months no pro-ration and then $10 per month till it reaches a $50 minimum.

I don’t know all the details but it’s coming and it will be rolled out in 2009.

This will only improve Sprint’s value to customers.  As a premier carrier that doesn’t renew contracts when you change plans, it’s going to be another advantage for customers to pick Sprint.

2/6/2009 by www.mountainviewcellphones.com

If your business T-1 line, DSL, or cable goes down, does your business go down with it?

With Sprint & Cradlepoint, the answer is no.  Sprint’s most dependable 3G network ratings used with a Cradlepoint EVDO/WiFi/Ethernet router provides an easy solution for failover and additional bandwidth. 

 The Cradlepoint router can have up to 3 Sprint wireless broadband cards.  It does load sharing among the cards to maintain as quick a connection as possible when used.  It can be put behind your main router and the main router can be set for failover to use the broadband aircard solutions or this can be your main router for the business with aircard redundancy built in.

The additional uptime security comes from the fact that it is a wireless connection that is used.  If you have a good signal, then this avoids the problem of a physical network problem with a line.  If something physically happens to the copper or coax cable or T-1 line, having two or more carriers riding on that same physical line doesn’t provide the safety a business requires (as all the services will be cut with physical line).  Having a wireless back up in this way ensures you have greatly reduced physical geographic risk for your network. 

The solution is also scalable, so you can just add 1 to 3 aircards to increase the available bandwidth to the office. 

In terms of pricing, in many instances, we can get pricing for aircards for $49.99/month for our business customers.  Feel free to contact us if you are interested in discussing more details of how to protect your business from interuption.   

2/2/2009  by www.mountainviewcellphones.com

Sprint’s fortunes have the opportunity to change dramatically this year.  Unfortunately, consumers are very conservative this year, so that alone may derail the come back.  However, there are four big things that are going for the company.

 1.  WiMax roll-out…this is critical to hitting Verizon and ATT where it hurts (local data service to homes) and growing volume dramatically for mobile data users.  This is a truly unique product Sprint and Clearwire have and they need to get the roll-out going as fast as possible.

2.  Palm PRE…just in time for the 1st generation Apple upgrade with ATT, so customers have a better choice versus the IPhone.  If the PRE lives up to the blogosphere hype, then this can start subscriber growth again for Sprint.  So, these first generation IPHONE users have for the most part, gotten a poor web experience and maybe looking for a better web experience.  They won’t find it with ATT 3G IPHONE as the data network speeds and capacity are still way below Sprint and Verizon.  I haven’t found a single IPHONE user who has loved the speed of the Internet on their devices (outside of WiFi).  The PRE has the opportunity to be the ONE phone you need for both business and personal uses.  I will even trade in my Blackberry 8830 for this upgrade.         

3.  A consistent message…come to Sprint for saving money and use your phone for all that it can do.  The hokey CEO messages are finally getting thru to people.  We are having more people from ATT and Verizon come into our stores and wanting to save money and seeing what Sprint has to offer.  This combined with the economic environment will continue to favor the rate structure advantage Sprint has. 

 4.  Independent consumer tests and gizmodo data speed tests have confirmed Sprint is improving and is the most dependable and fastest data network around.  This will take time to show up in the sale results, but people are beginning to take a look at Sprint again.

Sprint literally has a 2 year window now to really turn things around and get better execution going forward for sales and retention.  These few dramatically differentiated and unique products Sprint can offer this year will be able to leap frog the competition and give consumers more for less.