Sprint offered T-Mobile customers 50 percent off their bills if they switch carriers, kicking off price-cutting ahead of the holiday shopping season and sparking a Twitter spat with its rival’s CEO.
The Sprint offer, which follows T-Mobile’s free video-streaming announcement last week, includes as much as $650 to cover the costs of switching, the company said in a statement Wednesday.
Sprint previously had offered customers of Verizon and AT&T — the No. 1 and No. 2 carriers — half off what they were paying in monthly service charges. The promotion begins Friday, Sprint said.
Shares of Sprint fell 9.3 percent to $3.99 at Wednesday’s close, the biggest one-day drop in more than three months, reflecting investor concern that aggressive price-cutting will hurt the company’s bottom line. The stock is down 3.9 percent this year.
T-Mobile CEO John Legere tweeted: “Did we just witness beginning of the end for @sprint? $2.5B to cut, laying people off, now price cuts? The countdown clock makes sense now!”
