BTIG Research analyst Walter Piecyk “sees Apple selling more iPhones as carriers reduce the fee to upgrade dramatically to catch people who are impatient to upgrade to an iPhone but don’t want to pay the fee to switch to another carrier, known as the early termination fee,” Tiernan Ray reports for Barron’s.
Late yesterday, the SprintFeed blog posted a new two month promotion that Sprint-Nextel (S) is planning to launch this Sunday which allows a Sprint customer to buy-out their contract for a fee that is less than the Early Termination Fee (ETF). This would remove the financial incentive for Sprint customers to churn off the network and re-sign up as a new customer in order to get the full subsidy on an iPhone. – BTIG Research analyst Walter Piecyk
Read more in the full article here.
Sprint customers just need to throw a big fit and bombard Sprint HQ with angry phone calls and emails and Sprint will let them upgrade for free (w/new contract), just like AT&T did for their customers.