Being the chief executive of a major U.S. telco must be a lot like being in High School.
There was a fair amount of virtual puerile giggling when Sprint CEO Marcelo Claure used the word &qu ot;bullshit" on social media this week, and when the target of his ire, T-Mobile US chief exec John Legere, hit back we had an adolescent farce on our hands.
There is, of course, fierce rivalry between U.S. operators, but this is an industry in which words like ‘co-opetition’ are liberally bandied about (make your own mind up on the hideousness of that particular portmanteau), hence it was unusual to watch two senior figures bicker like teenagers.
To borrow from the schoolyard vernacular, Legere started it.
The T-Mobile CEO took to Twitter to criticise Sprint’s new flat-rate pricing plan All-In, which attracted criticism from the media and from users for failing to include tax or fees and for coming with a 600 kbps limit on streaming video, although Sprint quickly rectified the latter.
"I give credit to @sprint for swinging the bat when they do – but #allin is a swing and a miss, guys!!" Legere said.
By Legere’s standards, it was a fairly innocuous comment. But it turned out to be the last straw for Claure.
"I am so tired of your Uncarrier bullshit when you are worse than the other two carriers together," Claure said, as part of a multi-tweet diatribe hitting out at the hidden additional costs associated with handset upgrades under T-Mobile’s Jump On Demand plan.
Cue an infuriating response from Legere.
"You mad bro?" he asked.
"Isn’t it cute that Marcelo’s been following me on Twitter since joining? Now he’s starting to sound like me to get attention – it’s working!" he added.
Fortunately Claure had the sense to walk away before the whole thing got even more embarrassing…and before Deutsche Telekom CEO Timotheus Hoettges was forced to call Softbank’s Masayoshi Son to discuss the fact that "the boys aren’t getting along" and ask whether grounding the pair of them would be a good idea.
Legere and Claure aren’t always on opposite sides though.
T-Mobile and Sprint are working together via Save Wireless Choice to push for favourable conditions for smaller carriers in the upcoming FCC spectrum auction. They also flirted with a merger in 2013 that ultimately fell apart, and as a result they both face a difficult task in competing with AT&T and Verizon, something Legere has been particularly vocal – and sweary – about.
But in many ways the battle against the big guns is a red herring.
T-Mobile and Sprint are fighting hard against one another for third place in the U.S. mobile market, and sparks will continue to fly in the coming weeks as they prepare to published second quarter financial results.
Sprint kept its nose in front in Q1, ending the period with around 300,000 more customers than T-Mo, but three months on the balance of power could have shifted. Whichever ended Q2 ahead will doubtless bask in its short-term glory.
But in the longer term the company that comes out on top will probably be the one that is able to diversify its service offering, and at the moment that looks more likely to be T-Mobile.
The firm has reportedly attracted a handful of suitors in recent weeks, including cable operator Comcast and satellite TV provider Dish Network.
Meanwhile, AT&T is – it claims – close to closing the acquisition of DirecTV, although it has been forced to extend its completion deadline once more this week to accommodate the regulatory process. And Verizon last week closed the $4.4 billion acquisition of AOL, adding its advertising and content assets to its portfolio.
All of which potentially leaves Sprint in a vulnerable po sition.
So when Legere continued to poke the bear on Twitter on Thursday, speculating that he "hit a nerve at end of [a] rough week", he might not have been far wrong.
(And for the record, there’s only one word I hate more than ‘co-opetition’ and that’s ‘uncarrier’ <shudder>.)
