Effective August 11, Claure will be Sprint’s new president and CEO. He founded wireless distributor Brightstar in 2007, which is currently owned by SoftBank. Brightstar mostly manages trade-in programs, custom retail strategies, and supply chain solutions for carriers and manufacturers. Claure joined Sprint’s board in January, which allowed him the opportunity to better know the company.
Claure’s immediate plans involve making Sprint “extremely cost effective” while also having it compete “aggressively in the marketplace.” Claure also plans to push ahead with Sprint’s network modernization, which involves boosting the carrier’s 4G LTE speeds through Spark, its tri-band 4G network.
Hesse joined Sprint as its president and CEO in December 2007. Since then, he led the company through several acquisitions, the most notable of which was Sprint’s merger with SoftBank back in 2012. Hesse also led Sprint through some hazardous times, including its failed attempt to expand the company’s WiMax technology.
The move coincides with Sprint having reportedly called off its potential merger with T-Mobile. Sprint and SoftBank apparently felt that their attempt to purchase T-Mobile was unlikely to get the green light from regulators. The dead deal is what likely prompted the change in management, but we’ll likely never know the full details.
