Letter to the Editor

Editor's note: The following is a reponse from Sprint-Nextel(S Quote) to an item about the company in The Five Dumbest Things on Wall Street column of May 8.

Considering bringing more expertise to support our network is a dumb idea? A company is irresponsible if it isn't looking at every option to improve its business every minute, every day. First, let's be clear about reports that Sprint is considering outsourcing certain functions of our network: While we are always looking at options to better serve customers, we've made no decision about whether this would make sense for us. But the concept has merit, if you can go beyond the knee-jerk reaction of the term "network outsourcing."

Wireless companies throughout Europe that have employed these partnerships still own their networks and make the key decisions. But they are able to bring to their customers a network with the expertise and experience of thousands of more engineers, technicians and other experts to add on to the existing carrier's network team. More people; more skills.

When this happens, some of the existing teams have been rebadged -- but they stay in place, doing the same job with more resources, more highly advanced software, access to global best practices, etc. ...

Generally, while retaining network ownership, the carrier interacts directly with the customer; the carrier plans network investment and expansion. The carrier is in total, ultimate control, but can focus on the things the carrier does best, and leave tower repairs, equipment delivery, asset management and day-to-day network monitoring to a vendor -- employing much of the carrier's original team -- who does that best.

Sprint has a history of thinking smart and thinking ahead -- remember the "pin drop" on the first all-fiber-optic long distance network the first all-digital wireless network and most recently the first national 4G network in the United States? All of that came from Sprint because we are willing to consider new ideas.

James W. Fisher
Sprint Nextel spokesman