I've deliberately avoided posting about this subject the past few days, although I've been following it since it first appeared on The Consumerist website last week. I've also been encouraged to write about the post by a number of other bloggers.

I've vacillated between two schools of thought about this topic, but the one I keep coming back to relates to the underlying principles of capitalism, where Sprint are well within their rights to terminate any customer for pretty much any reason - they are, after all not in the business of providing communication service, but the business of making money for their shareholders. They just happen to be making money by providing communication services.

It can also be argued that the actions Sprint are taking in churning these customers off their books is beneficial to the company's bottom line, as it reduces the number of support calls, and hence the amount of money spent on providing such support. It also has a minor side effect of decreasing the number of accounts with billing problems (which are the primary cited reason for the high number of calls), which should have the impact of increasing revenues again.

Of course, weighed against this is the negative impact that all the exposure has generated across the Internet, and amongst mobile bloggers especially where the response has been almost universally negative. Ars Technica even popped up with their own experience.

Again, I can't help but think there is no real big issue here, there's simply a dispute between customers and the company they are purchasing a service from. Individual instances where customers are being mischarged, overcharged or generally billed for goods or services they didn't use aside, if Sprint choose to terminate a customer's service at no penalty to the customer, then that's their prerogative.

Sprint have however managed to shoot themselves in the foot by instigating another such customer purge, this time adversely affecting a group of US servicemen and women, by penalising them for using Sprint's own roaming service.

A few days after the original story appeared, another appear on The Consumerist with what appeared to be a rebuttal from Sprint, although delivered as if from a Sprint employee reporting anonymously, that claimed that the majority of the people who's accounts were being terminated were actually attempting to defraud Sprint. Consumerist reader ScoobyDoo was one of many who was less than trusting of the veracity of the account:

I call shenanigans.

This guy is probably speaking on behalf of Sprint PR and is trying to slow down the backlash they got from their little stunt.

They probably thought they could fire these 1000 customers without anyone noticing, but forgot about the Internet.

The story he's telling may apply to a couple of customers, but the previous poster proves that not everyone was a scammer, and Sprint should be ashamed of itself for trying to pin the blame on their customers when it is evident that THEY are also to blame in some cases.

Although balanced against this, other posters such as BNET41 say:

If you've ever worked as a CSR you'd know how common this is. There seem to be people out there who have nothing better to do than try to get free stuff.

In all of this, the one party that has yet to make a public announcement is Sprint itself, or at least not anywhere I've seen.

What I do think this situation shows is not that Sprint are necessarily a bad company (although there will always be debate about this), it seems to show there is a fundamental disconnect in the US mobile telecommunications industry, something that is also shown in the recent release of Apple's iPhone as an AT&T exclusive. With each company working hard to generate as much income for their shareholders as possible, the US-wide communications infrastructure is suffering, and consequently customers are having a hard time making use of such services. The original poster on the SprintUsers forum makes the point that whilst serving in Iraq - effectively a warzone - he received a better standard of service and operational coverage, at a lesser price, than he receives from the US telecommunications provider Sprint.

Why on earth I cant get coverage at the United States Military Academy, 40 minutes away from New York City is a mystery to me. I had a cell phone the entire time I was in Iraq with a middle eastern company. I payed LESS to call home and keep in touch from the otherside of the world than I do now with Sprint to call within the country. It also did not matter if I was in a major city or out in the middle of nowhere in the desert, I ALWAYS had full coverage. Never had a dropped call, and the customer reps of that company spoke better English than those with Sprint do.

It is this small section of the post that caught my attention and got me thinking - how can it be that in such a technologically advanced country, obtaining cellphone coverage, roaming and interconnects between existing providers is such a problem?

I remember myself when I used to employ people living in the US I always had to check in advance where in the country they would be to make sure that I could call them. In some cases, depending on location, I couldn't call as their carrier didn't provide international inbound call connectivity in certain regions. In some, especially to me, ludicrous instances I couldn't even send a text message, as there was no text sharing interconnect between carriers for roaming users, a situation that appears to still exist.

More than 30 million viewers tune in to 'America Idol' each week to vote for their favorite contestants by dialing into the toll-free telephone numbers or texting in on their Cingular Wireless phones.

To expand on that small quote - you can only vote for American Idol is you have a Cingular mobile phone. If you're on any other network, you cannot send in a voting text.

The equivalent situation in the UK would have the text voting provider laughed out of business, yet this seems to be the norm in the US.

Apple going with AT&T for the iPhone has also struck many people as odd, for the same reason: AT&T use a proprietary technology to deliver mobile services that is entirely incompatible with every other provider. Sprint phones are also incompatible with other providers, so those who are using Sprint are also locked in to that carrier if they want to continue using the handsets they have bought - and perhaps that is the real reason for the angst, not that the service is bad (which it apparently is), or that the company is doing what it is legally obliged to do (make money for it's shareholders), it's the fact there's no other choice that is driving the anger.

So I really think the larger issue here is not Sprint, but the parlous state of the mobile telecoms industry in the US. Common shortcodes (5 or 6 digit codes that work on all carriers) are a new phenomenon in the US (only being introduced in the past couple of years), and number portability is still a large issue. Coverage varies depending on your provider, and some areas you are limited in which provider you can even choose. Sprint dumping users is just a symptom of a much wider malaise.