In an increasingly competitive U.S. wireless market, there are four major national carriers: Verizon, AT&T, Sprint, and T-Mobile. The market share gap between the top two and the bottom two, however, is so large that Sprint and T-Mobile are largely left on their own to duke it out for the No. 3 spot. T-Mobile has been gaining the upper hand, but that's where Sprint's new CEO Marcelo Claure comes into the picture.

The Bolivian billionaire was recently tapped for the job amidst a failed attempt at acquiring T-Mobile and he recently sat down with Re/code to explain what Sprint must do to shed its stagnant image.

"We have to do everything within our power to get back to winning," Claure told Re/code in an interview Tuesday.

And doing everything is just what Claure has been doing since he stepped into his office in August. Since Claure's term as Sprint's chief executive began, the carrier has unleashed a series of aggressive moves akin to T-Mobile's "Uncarrier" strategy. Claure has also pushed for speedier network deployments in order to increase the carrier's footprint.

Has it worked? Despite Claure's reign only being a few weeks in, it seems that it has on a small scale. Sprint is still an archaic brand, an image that will take some time to flip, but according to Claure, there were a couple days over the past weeks where Sprint "gained more customers from rivals than it lost." Adding subscribers, Claure concedes, will be the benchmark for the company's success.

"It feels good," Claure said. "Last year we lost a few million customers."

Claure made his mark as founder of Brightstar Corp, a company that has since grown to net $10 billion in gross revenue. Japan-based SoftBank Corp., the parent company of Sprint, bought out Brightstar last year, and after federal scrutiny discouraged a merger with T-Mobile, Claure was chosen to replace then-Sprint CEO Dan Hesse. Masayoshi Son, chief executive of SoftBank, believes Claure can inject the kind of precision needed to turn Sprint around.

Claure hasn't shied away from his duties. Almost immediately after starting as CEO, he announced that there would tough times ahead for the company, including job cuts.

"I have been very frank with employees from Day 1," Claure said. "We are looking at everything that we do. ... Businesses we shouldn't be in, we are in the process of eliminating."

Whether or not Claure's strategy works remains to be seen, but if we've learned anything from T-Mobile's own eccentric CEO John Legere, a new head can definitely give a company new legs.

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