Sprint Expands Cable Telephony Services Offering for Small Businesses

May 8, 2007; 02:14 AM
Sprint, a market leader in residential cable telephony with VoIP services, has expanded its cable telephony services offering designed to help cable companies benefit from increasing growth opportunities in the commercial services market. Sprint now provides VoIP services to 14 leading cable companies, supporting over 1.7 million residential customers on its network and, through its cable partners, reaches approximately 34 million homes passed.

Sprint’s continued expansion into the cable market has created a revenue stream with strong growth potential. Sprint’s annualized revenue from this business has now grown to $400 million. Sprint is now using the power of its telecom assets and communications expertise to expand its delivery of telephony solutions to include commercial services.

“Our vision for Sprint’s cable strategy, whether it’s wireline or wireless, is to deliver compelling, integrated services that provide unique value to customers,” said Jim Patterson, vice president of Cable Solutions for Sprint. “Our expertise and experience in the residential VoIP services space sets the stage for our next foray into the commercial services market.”

As part of enabling fixed line voice services for businesses, Sprint offers its cable customers:

• Wireline solution for the commercial market — Sprint’s small business solution leverages its proven residential CLEC service bureau and includes the following services: one to 12 lines of unlimited local and long distance service; standard calling features including rotary hunting, caller ID to a deskset or PC, call waiting/call forwarding, etc.; business-class directory listings; business-class voicemail including call attendant, find me follow me, voicemail to email and other enhanced features; and support for business 911 services.

• MSO marketing support — Sprint’s Marketing Support Program (MSP) is designed to meet specific needs of cable companies by tailoring programs to help them launch their commercial services. Campaign mapping, customer quote generation, and tracking tools enhance existing cable company programs with effective means to service the small business space. Sprint also collaborates with individual cable companies to develop targeted marketing programs and leverages its longstanding experience in the business market to help train the sales and support personnel of its cable partners.

Sprint already has agreements to provide cable telephony commercial services with Time Warner Cable and Suddenlink Communications. Sprint will provide commercial and residential cable telephony services to Baja Broadband and Millennium Digital Media:

• Baja Broadband, LLC, headquartered in Charlotte, N.C., owns and operates broadband cable systems serving over 67,000 residential and commercial business customers in the West. Baja Broadband is a full-service broadband company that delivers an array of advanced digital video entertainment programming and high-speed data products to residential customers and full-service communication solutions to commercial customers. Sprint will offer residential and commercial telephony solutions for Baja Broadband homes in Utah, Nevada, New Mexico and Colorado.
• Millennium Digital Media -- Millennium Digital Media is a broadband services company that provides telecommunications services including voice, video and data to approximately 130,000 residential and commercial customers in Maryland, Michigan, Washington and Oregon. The company is headquartered in St. Louis, Mo. Sprint will provide residential and commercial telephony solutions for Millennium Digital Media markets in Washington, Oregon and Michigan covering 184,000 households passed.

In addition, Sprint continues to expand and strengthen its residential VoIP portfolio of cable partners by providing residential voice services to Antietam and MTC Cable:

• Antietam Cable provides cable television and high-speed Internet services to residents and businesses in Washington County, Md., with offices in Hagerstown, Md. Sprint provides residential telephony solutions for Antietam reaching approximately 52,000 households in Maryland.

• MTC Cable provides cable television and high-speed Internet service to residences in New York. Sprint provides residential telephony solutions for MTC Cable, reaching 5,000 households in New York.

In addition to providing cable telephony residential and commercial services, Sprint is bolstering its foothold in the commercial market by leveraging network capacity provided by the cable companies. Sprint buys access to transport traffic from mobile cell sites to its backbone network and provides the “last mile” to large business customers.

“Leveraging the cable networks is a win-win proposition for Sprint and our cable partners,” said Patterson. “By purchasing capacity on a cable company’s network, we reduce our access costs and it creates a new source of free cash flow for our cable partner.”

About Sprint Nextel

Sprint Nextel offers a comprehensive range of wireless and wireline communications services bringing the freedom of mobility to consumers, businesses and government users. Sprint Nextel is widely recognized for developing, engineering and deploying innovative technologies, including two robust wireless networks serving 53.6 million customers at the end of the first quarter 2007; industry-leading mobile data services; instant national and international walkie-talkie capabilities; and a global Tier 1 Internet backbone. For more information, visit www.sprint.com.