Sprint CEO Marcelo Claure believes the company will have the number 1 or number 2 network in the country within 18 to 24 months.
Claure made the comments while speaking at the Recode Conference.
“I can tell you we’re making progress, and I can tell you the area of focus will be the continued building of our network,” he said.
Many third-party network ranking businesses place Sprint’s network in last place when compared to the performance of AT&T, T-Mobile, and Verizon Wireless.
Claure says Sprint has already made some improvements and notes the company has deep resources thanks to majority owner SoftBank. He has spent a lot of time with SoftBank Chairman Masayoshi Son in order to craft a viable network improvement plan.
Claure has already helped stop customer losses. When he joined Sprint as CEO last year, Sprint was losing close to 700,000 customers per quarter. In the most-recent quarter, Sprint added 1.2 million customers.
“I think the patient is doing well now,” said Claure said. “The patient is in stable condition.”
Claure didn’t provide specifics about Sprint’s plan, but the company does have large spectrum holdings in the 800MHz, 1900MHz and 2.5GHz bands. Many of its devices now access LTE in all three bands, which Sprint markets as Sprint Spark.
