Sprint extends its ‘cut your bill in half’ campaign

Overland Park-based Sprint, clinging to its third-place ranking among U.S. mobile carriers, is trying to squeeze more growth from the prepaid market by extending its “cut your bill in half” offer to prepaid customers of AT&T and T-Mobile US.

Sprint’s Boost Mobile prepaid unit is offering T-Mobile’s MetroPCS and AT&T’s Cricket Wireless customers 2.5 gigabytes of data for $20 a month, according to a statement.

Similar plans from MetroPCS and Cricket offer 2 gigabytes and 2.5 gigabytes for $40 a month.

Since taking over as Sprint’s chief executive officer last year, Marcelo Claure has been able to reverse years of customer losses with half-price offers and tablet promotions. The effort has been particularly successful with prepaid customers.

In the first quarter, Sprint added 546,000 pay-as-you-go users, surpassing those of AT&T, Verizon Communications and T-Mobile combined.

Sprint’s focus on bargain hunters underscores the challenges the carrier faces in a market where growth has been slowing. Cutting prices is one of Sprint’s few options as T- Mobile continues to attract more of the lucrative postpaid customers that tend to be more loyal and add additional family members and devices to their plans.

This story was originally published June 19, 2015 at 11:02 AM with the headline "Sprint extends its ‘cut your bill in half’ campaign."