Sprint drops 200 US soldiers for 'roaming too much'

Link: Sprint boots 200 American patriots for using their phones | The Register

It’s not been a good month for Sprint. Just over a week ago they booted 1,000 ‘annoying’ customers for calling customer services too much, which resulted in plenty of negative PR around the web. Now they’re really asking for trouble, having thrown 200 US soldiers off the network for ‘roaming too much’.

Maybe you think they were roaming somewhere far away, having just arrived back from Iraq. But no, these soldiers were at the US Military Academy at West Point, New York – only about 40 minutes away from New York City.

The 200 were re-deployed to the Academy shortly after a 12-month stint in Iraq, and when they powered up their phones, they couldn’t get even a hint of a signal on Sprint’s network. Several of the soldiers were already using Sprint’s “free roaming” feature, which let them tap into partner networks at no extra charge – so they encouraged the rest to do the same.

Then Sprint brought the hammer down. At the beginning of July – just as the nation was about to celebrate its Independence Day – the 200 received letters informing them that their Sprint accounts would be canceled because they were roaming too much. Each were told they had until the end of the month to find a new carrier – and many had just upgraded to new Sprint phones.

Oh dearie me. Wonder how Sprint are going to spin their way out of this ‘unpatriotic’ act?