Sprint’s legacy data networks are on life support. Frame relay and ATM customers need to make migration plans now.

The carrier is committed to decommissioning its legacy frame relay and ATM networks as soon as possible. Sprint’s plans to move customers to its MPLS IP backbone were made public two years ago.

And the carrier is sticking to its guns.

“The deadline is 1/1/09 or sooner,” says Dan Dooley, vice president of international and wholesale markets at Sprint.

While the carrier says it will not abandon any customer still left on the network come 2009, it is working closely with customers to get them to migrate to one if its IP services. But be advised, if you’re one of the last frame customers on any carrier’s network you’re not getting the most bang for your buck.

Dooley says Sprint will reach an important milestone by the end of June when the carrier will be supporting more “IP ports than legacy frame relay or ATM ports.”

And not only does the carrier know when it's pulling the plug, it's also investing no money in keeping frame relay and ATM up and running. Instead, Sprint is investing all of its capital expenditures, an expected $600 million for 2007, in its core IP MPLS network and services, Dooley says.

That includes converged services that bring its wireless and wireline services together, Dooley says. Examples of this include support for Ethernet and wireless access to the carrier’s IP and MPLS-based services.

“All of our wireline spend is on our IP MPLS backbone. That is the core of any enterprise offer,” Dooley says.

But for existing frame relay and ATM customers, Sprint is offering two prime migration paths to IP. The first, called SprintLink, is a Layer 2 offering based on Layer 2 Tunneling Protocol (L2TP) that allows customers to keep their frame relay gear and connect to Sprint’s MPLS network via a Layer 2 connection.