Sprint announces job cuts as part of reorg

Sprint Nextel (NYSE:S) confirmed it will cut an unspecified number of jobs as part of the senior level reorganization it announced in January.

"In early January, we announced changes at the senior officer level to consolidate business and consumer sales, business and consumer marketing and wholesale and M2M," Sprint's Scott Sloat, confirmed in an email to FierceWireless. "The latest job reductions are a further extension of this consolidation. Sprint's workforce is approximately 40,000 employees, and we do not expect this to change significantly with this reorganization. Sprint continues to hire new employees into positions that support our corporate strategy."

The number of positions affected likely isn't more than 100, and the cuts will go into effect in March, according to people familiar with the company's plans who asked to remain anonymous.

Sprint in January said it will merge its consumer and enterprise sales and marketing divisions and will lose four executives as part of a corporate reshuffling aimed at streamlining the carrier's operations as it works to finance its network upgrade and iPhone launch.

As part of the overhaul, Paget Alves, currently Sprint's president of business markets, will head Sprint's consumer sales as its chief sales officer. Bill Malloy will lead Sprint's marketing for both consumer and enterprise markets. Further, Danny Bowman, the president of Sprint's machine-to-machine business unit, will leave the company, and Matt Carter, currently head of Sprint's wholesale business, will take over the carrier's M2M portfolio. Robert H. Johnson, head of Sprint's consumer business, John Carney, head of consumer marketing, and Chris Rogers, a Sprint executive who worked on corporate development and spectrum, will all leave Sprint.

"Because of the enormous investments we're making this year in Network Vision and in the iPhone, we need to consistently be looking for ways to be more efficient," Sprint CEO Dan Hesse wrote in announcing the changes in January.

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