Rival Sprint has officially on the race to smear AT&T’s current attempt to buy T-Mobile USA. They have already took another attempt to offer lucrative termination fee by publishing ad for the migration from T-Mobile to Sprint. Actually the corporate or business customers are the main targets now. Hope that they will come after the normal users later.
Sprint is said to be offering customers $175 credits when porting their number over from T-Mobile to Sprint. The $175 should cover most of the ETC you’d otherwise pay (and depending on what type of phone and plan you get, could pay for 2-3 months of service before you’ll have to come out of pocket).
Sprint CEO Dan Hesse has publicly called it bad for competition, saying,
“If AT&T is permitted to devour one of the two remaining independent national wireless carries, while the rest of the world achieves advances in technology and innovation for the 21st century, the U.S. will go backwards- toward last century’s Ma Bell.”
The document states that business customers who ported their number with this promotion can leave Sprint for T-Mobile and get their ETF waived if the acquisition doesn’t go through, though they have 90 days from the announcement day to do so. And if the proposal does end up being approved, Sprint states you’re theirs “for life”.
Another attempt was taken by Spring to publish an offensive ad which ran on a number of political Web sites and in various newspapers on Tuesday. The ad depicts a man in a dress similar to that worn by the spokeswoman for T-Mobile. The ad featured the tag line “It makes sense if you don’t think about it”–also a play on T-Mobile’s advertisements. The ads were funded by Sprint and created on behalf of a number of groups opposing the proposed $39 billion deal.
By mid-afternoon on Tuesday, the groups backing the ad had begun receiving complaints and a Sprint representative confirmed to Mobilized that the ads are being pulled.
“We believe the proposed transaction is really bad for consumers, the industry and the country,” a Sprint representative said. “We supported these efforts to get that message out broadly to consumers. We certainly apologize the material offended anyone. That was not our intent.”
Photo Credit: spantechular
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Oh thanks, i appriciate that!