Sprint and Ericsson Ink a 7-Year Network Services Deal

Wireless carrier Sprint and telecommunications equipment vendor Ericsson announced on Friday a unique network services agreement. The deal between the two spans over a seven-year term and is expected to offer the former the possibility to see impressive enhancements to its network, while also enabling the latter to expand its network services business in North America.

According to the agreement, Sprint will transfer operation of its wireless and wireline networks to Ericsson. In addition, the wireless carrier also stated that a number of 6,000 Sprint employees were expected to work for Ericsson starting with the third quarter of the ongoing year. The contract, the duo announced, is valued between $4.5 billion and $5 billion (USD) and comes with an option of renewal.

“No other U.S.-based carrier has followed through on the business-enhancing vision inherent in Network Advantage. Our best-ever network performance will become even better by leveraging Ericsson’s world-class leadership in network services, their proprietary tools, and the knowledge of more than 30,000 dedicated and highly-specialized service professionals to power Sprint’s Now Network,” said Steve Elfman, president of Network Operations and Wholesale, Sprint.

The Network Advantage comes with a series of key elements, including the fact that Sprint retains full ownership and control of its network assets – while also being the one to decide when it comes to investments – as well as technology and vendor selections, and full control of the customer experience, customer technical support and services review, meaning that users will continue to work with Sprint, and not with Ericsson.

At the same time, Ericsson will be in charge of day-to-day services, provisioning and maintenance for Sprint's networks (CDMA, iDEN and wireline), and will also optimize Sprint’s multi-vendor inventory of assets. In addition, the company also announced that Sprint's employees would become part of Ericsson Services Inc., and that no job cuts were planned at the moment.