T-Mobile confirms plans to phase out Sprint from the summer

T-Mobile has confirmed plans to discontinue the Sprint brand from the summer.

After years of back and forth over a potential merger, the two companies combined earlier in the year, and now it seems as though T-Mobile wants to get rid of the Sprint name entirely.

T-Mobile’s CEO, Dan Sievert, shared information on the carrier’s unification strategy when speaking at an investor event, telling attendees the plan was to shutter Sprint by summer.

The coronavirus pandemic did impact the company’s original plans, but Sievert stressed that the firm was “always planning” to remove the public-facing brand from the summer onwards.

Speaking of the changes, he said: “With COVID-19, we moved it out into the mid-summer instead of the early summer, and this is when we will essentially be advertising one flagship postpaid T-Mobile brand as well as operating a unified fleet of retail.

“The retail piece is why we slowed down just a little bit.”

Sprint customers can already access T-Mobile’s network, with the latter promising that Sprint customers could use its LTE towers for free.

That doubles the number of cell sites for Sprint customers, increasing bandwidth and indeed speeds.

80% of Sprint’s customer base has a handset that’s compatible with the T-Mobile network, according to Sievert’s announcement.

The two US carriers spent a long time overcoming regulatory hurdles to finalize the merger, and T-Mobile stressed that the combination of the two brands would speed up its rollout of 5G technology.

America’s two other major carriers – AT&T and Verizon – are also investing in 5G.

Are you sad to see the Sprint brand go? Let us know your thoughts on this story over on social media and check back soon for more news and updates on T-Mobile’s plans for the future.