For the last couple of years, there has been fierce competition between U.S. telecom companies. The likes of Sprint Corp (NYSE:S) and T-Mobile US Inc (NASDAQ:TMUS) have all been seeking to outshine each other in profitability and the ability to woo more customers. In showcasing its competency Sprint says that nearly 5TB of its data was used during the Super Bowl at the NRG Stadium in Houston. This was triple of what was consumed at last year’s big event at Levi Stadium in the Bay Area.
But T-Mobile says it narrowly beat Sprint in average uploading and downloading speeds
Sprint, T-Mobile, AT&T Inc. (NYSE:T) and Verizon Communications Inc. (NYSE:VZ) are the big four wireless carriers that are aggressively seeking supremacy of the market. However, Verizon and T-Mobile are the legends that were actively engaged in the Super Bowl event with a series of TV ads and tweets.
Although even as Sprint took the helm in data usage, T-Mobile brags in the fact that it almost banged Sprint in standard upload and download speeds. Sprint had close to 124Mbps download. At some point, the speeds hit 85Mbps when the game went to Overtime. Notably, the biggest of all these speeds was deployed within the stadium to help in handling the extra capacity that the network was experiencing. All along, Sprint made every effort to show the competitiveness of its network and how it has been improving over the past few years.
A speculated a Sprint/T-Mobile merger
Sprint had very disappointing earnings last week, which have triggered a conversation among analysts of a possible merger with T-Mobile. Barclay’s analyst Amir Rozwadowski says, “Management indicated that additional industry consolidation may be needed in order to more effectively compete with the big two,”
The analyst points out at Canada, which he says it’s only three carriers up north are friendlier and profitable. They are worth emulating to bring in higher average revenue per user. However, it now remains to be put what other strategies each of them is putting in place to stay afloat. Meanwhile, Sprint’s stock was trading at $8.36 a fall of $0.07 or-0.83%.
