* What about Sprint's landline business?
Sprint’s announcement last week that it is acquiring one of its affiliates underscores the carrier’s continued emphasis on its wireless business – an emphasis that has raised questions about whether Sprint is fully committed to its traditional, landline business customers.
Sprint’s announcement last week that it is acquiring one of its affiliates underscores the carrier’s continued emphasis on its wireless business – an emphasis that has raised questions about whether Sprint is fully committed to its traditional, landline business customers.
The short answer to the question is yes, according to industry watchers, but there is no denying Sprint is devoted to wireless since announcing its plans in December to merge with Nextel in a $35 billion deal. The merger is expected to close within the next couple of months.
The carrier’s investments and focus are, at least publicly, exclusively on wireless from an acquisition and product development standpoint. Sprint is spending $1.3 billion to buy its second largest affiliate, US Unwired, and others could follow. The carrier also is spending a healthy majority of its capital this year on wireless. This year the carrier projects it will spend nearly $3 billion on its wireless network, about $900 million on local networks and services and about $300 million on its long-distance networks, including IP.
“We have a large and robust IP network today, and if you look at investments we made year by year you will probably see we would not be alone in our slowdown,” says Vicki Warker, vice president of marketing and products for Sprint Business Solutions.
Sprint has yet to make a single announcement this year that does not include wireless technology.
What you will find are press releases that include integrated services, such as Sprint’s EV-DO service launch, and announcements about customer wins, such as Ford’s plan to migrate 8,000 users exclusively to wireless. You will not find an announcement that solely refers to its VPN or security services or a customer win that involves only these landline offerings.
Sprint is expected to announce today additional enhancements for its PCS Data Link service, supporting for the first time wireless-to-MPLS network access for business customers.
“From an organizational perspective, Sprint has been focused on the Nextel merger,” says Lisa Pierce, senior analyst at Forrester Research. “But it’s also focused on making headway with new capabilities like MPLS.”
Another analyst agrees. “From what we can see, Sprint is in the enterprise services business. There has been no change there,” says David Rohde, analyst at TechCaliber. “They certainly aren’t doing a good job making that clear publicly, but they are still in the enterprise services business.”
Sprint acknowledges it has been publicly focused on wireless, but the carrier says it is committed to its enterprise business customers.
“There is a lot more buzz around wireless, but we view the wireline business as the foundation for everything we do. It’s a strategic asset to us,” Warker says.
One customer says he has no complaints about service levels or attention from Sprint since the carrier announced its Nextel acquisition. Jim Giantomenico, senior vice president and CIO at Finlay, a fine jewelry retailer with counters in more than 900 department stores, says his team is meeting weekly with the account manager and several representatives in anticipation of network changes that include using wireless access to the company’s corporate network.
He says Sprint’s merger with Nextel is a good move in the long term. “Any time you have a merger of this magnitude there is the risk of taking your eye off of the ball in the short term,” he says. But he hasn’t noticed any negative changes so far.
Warker says many of Sprint’s new wireless services and capabilities announced over the past 12 months are integrated with its wireline business. She says that Sprint’s wireless business users are treated like enterprise customers. Examples include Sprint’s service-level agreements for wireless voice and data services for business users, and the carrier’s remote access Extended Workplace offer couples Wi-Fi, PCS and dial-up access from a single client, she says.
