Today, corporate IT departments often display outright hostility toward their personal digital assistant-using employees. No tech support, no nada. That's going to change. Making it possible for salespeople to easily use a pocketable wireless device to check an account's status on the company's credit watch list, or to check in-stock status immediately on an item a customer needs now, will be a hallmark of the well-connected company before long.

Big problem: How do you build all these enterprise wireless systems -- the critical back-ends to support these newly freed-up workers? We can't look to small players like AvantGo (AVGO:Nasdaq - news - boards), which have so far been in the spotlight in business wireless-PDA stories.

Big companies want big-company providers behind their wireless-enterprise systems. They want scale. They want the impression of permanence. And that's what Sprint said Wednesday it wants to deliver.

I think it's a smart bet.

Sprint isn't alone here. IBM (IBM:NYSE - news - boards), Electronic Data Systems (EDS:NYSE - news - boards) and other big shops are after this market, too. But I think that what Sprint is calling its Sprint E|Solutions Enterprise Mobile Practice (gotta find a nice acronym for that!) can be a major revenue-generator.

Not tomorrow, but before much longer. At $20.56, down about a buck Wednesday, Sprint looks cheap enough now to start accumulating.

Its fourth-quarter net income of 41 cents a share edged the First Call/Thomson Financial consensus of 39 cents, which was encouraging.

Looking ahead, Sprint said last month that it expects 2001 earnings near the low end of its earlier prediction of a $1.65-to-$1.75 range, though it sees first-quarter results in only the high 30s, as opposed to a First Call 44 cent forecast.

So it sounds like you don't have to jump in right now: The stock may languish a while longer.

But Wednesday's announcement was the first real sign of life since Sprint began moaning and whining about its lost WorldCom merger last year, due to regulatory issues. Sprint may be getting back on track.

Big trend? Perfectly clear? Nope.

But at current prices, some telecom investments may be creeping up off the floor, and finally out of the "ludicrous" category.