Company Overview

Sprint was born in Abilene, Kansas, in 1899, as the Brown Telephone Company, which offered rural Midwestern communities an alternative to the much bigger Bell Telephone Company. Over time, Brown Telephone joined forces with other independent phone companies, eventually forming United Telecom and putting together an extensive communications network. After the breakup of the Bell telephone monopoly in the 1980s, United Telecom joined forces with GTE to form US Sprint, which focused on developing digital and fiber optic technologies and battling long-distance giant AT&T for market share. Sprint Corporation was formed in 1991, when United Telecom purchased GTE's share of US Sprint. Sprint was already the third-biggest wireless carrier in the U.S. when, in 2004, it merged with the fifth-largest wireless carrier, Nextel.  Today it remains the third largest cellular carrier behind AT&T and Verizon.

Sprint Nextel continually struggles to keep up with its larger competitors, and in 2007 and 2008 the company used layoffs to cut costs. Additionally, it announced in 2008 that it would close nearly 10 percent of its 1,400 retail shops and 20 percent of its 20,000 distribution points.  Sprint Nextel also spent about $3 billion since the completion of their merger to build a wireless broadband network based on the WiMAX standard.  The company also hopes to entice new customers by offering converged communications and broadcast entertainment services. As part of a joint venture with cable titans including Advance/Newhouse Communications, Comcast, Cox Communications, and Time Warner, the company is testing a program to provide cable television, home phone, and wireless phone services in a single package.