Following AT&T's move to shared data plans, Verizon recently introduced its first "top tier" shared data plan, entailing a substantial 20 GB for $150 per month.
Last week, T-Mobile USA announced its own new 4G unlimited data plan to become available following Labor Day. As the two industry giants continue to find themselves in need of both capping plans and throttling back data speeds, T-Mobile and Sprint are clearly offering capabilities they can differentiate with, although whether or not either can create true competitive advantages remains to be seen.
The problem with T-Mobile is truly non-trivial; it doesn't have the iPhone. That is a barrier that will continue to haunt the company and one that is likely to drive T-Mobile executives crazy. It also widely opens the door for Sprint to prove itself to be something other than an also-ran during the upcoming holiday buying season.
Although Sprint has yet to see a substantial and non-trivial turn-around on subscriber reach and installed base, the iPhone did finally stem the churn tide, with many fewer Sprint customers jumping ship. Sprint's business overall has stabilized, and the company is now finally in a position to combine two specific strengths – the iPhone and true, unlimited and un-throttled data plans.
In particular, whatever the next iPhone ends up being, one thing is certain: it will drive yet another major new wave of wireless data usage. Many of the new features in iOS 6, including what is expected to be support for LTE, will turn an ever increasing number of users into massive consumers of wireless data. This is one of the key reasons that Verizon and AT&T – with their massive numbers of smartphone subscribers and infrastructures that are going to fall short of meeting unlimited data plan needs –are scrambling to contain wireless data usage by killing off unlimited data plans and throttling back on those unlimited plans they can't shut down after reaching a certain wireless data threshold.
Sprint does not have any such concerns – at least not yet. Following the announcement of the next iPhone and the upcoming 2012 holiday buying season, Sprint will in fact be able to offer a true strategic differentiator relative to the two giants. It is now well-placed to take a next step toward recovery – from having achieved business stability in 2012, as its most recent fiscal Q2 2012 earnings report demonstrates – to delivering on new growth possibilities in 2013.
Even with 56 million users in hand (but keep in mind many of these are low end Nextel business users, where "push to talk" feature phones still matter!) the company has plenty of wireless data bandwidth to spare…and it has the iPhone.
Sprint's greatest hurdle is to overcome its status as a third player in a two-player game. Can Sprint's marketing teams rise to the challenge of demonstrating that it is a legitimate – and safe – alternative choice to AT&T and Verizon? Can it convey greatly expanded trust – and create an environment where positive word of mouth recognition and recommendation (especially through social channels) will go viral? These issues cannot be predicted, and we'll know only through hindsight whether Sprint's management team can execute at the highest business levels across sales and marketing.
The executive team has established a strategic differentiator; it will now need to prove beyond all shadow of a doubt that it can successfully deliver on the possibilities.
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Edited by
Braden Becker 
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