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Sprint in 'final negotiations' on Ericsson outsourcing
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The Wall Street Journal is reporting that Sprint is in "final negotiations" to outsource the management of its cellular network to Ericsson and will transfer 5,000 to 7,000 U.S. employees to the equipment vendor. The deal, which is valued at $2 billion, will mean that Ericsson will manage and maintain the thousands of cell sites that carry Sprint's wireless voice and data traffic.
The agreement, which has been rumored to be in the works for quite some time, is expected to slash Sprint's network costs by 20 percent. Sprint's board is reportedly reviewing the deal. If finalized, it will help Sprint aggressively reduce its spending to make up for its widespread customer losses. Today Sprint reported a net loss of 1.25 million postpaid subscribers.
The article did not detail whether the deal includes Sprint's iDEN network, which is separate from its CDMA network. Ericsson and Sprint declined to comment for the WSJ article.
In March a Swedish newspaper reported that the Sprint/Ericsson network outsourcing deal was complete, but neither Ericsson nor Sprint would confirm that report. According to the WSJ article, the complex deal could still fall apart.
For more:
- see this article (sub. req.)
Related Articles:
Report: Sprint, Ericsson sign $2B network outsourcing deal
Analyst: Sprint network outsourcing deal not 'imminent'
Report: Sprint to outsource network management to Ericsson
Sprint Nextel to cut 8,000 jobs
Sprint may close call centers to cut costs
Sprint may be considering outsourcing jobs
Comments
Posted by Anonymous | May 5, 2009 - 12:45pm
This is nothing new for Ericcson. They were under contract back in 05 & 06 to run T-Mobile ops in Southern California.
Posted by Anonymous | May 13, 2009 - 11:45pm
These morons over at Sprint Nextel think outsourcing is going to work. The FO people are going to be so mad, they will not respond to outages quickly, they will get on site pop a DVD in, watch a movie and then maybe work on the site, who do I know... because it is going on right now because Sprint Nextel took away their 401k, gutted the health car and laid off some good workers. With outsourcing hanging over FO heads, they are not doing anything and what they are doing they do it SLOW! They say they are working, fixing things and even document it but they are not, they site at home or site a the site with a DVD playing. The managers don't care either, because they are gone the second they are outsourced. So mangers just turn the other way and watch the FO just get around to it when ever. Sites are now down for hours and days over issues that can be fixed in very short order.
I have one FO person say to me, when I finish my movie I will go check it out. A CDMA site was down hard... the solution, re-seat the channel card... the outage lasted 6.5 hours. Our customers are suffering and will suffer more once the outsource goes through. Many FO people and their managers have said that when they are outsourced they will slow down to a crawl and do almost nothing, but be on site. On guy said, ya I'll be on site, but the heck if I'll fix the problem in a timely fashion, I'll milk that job all day if need be to pay Sprint back for kicking us out. So get ready for millions more to dump sprint because when they do outsource the network is going to suffer and if the morons in KC don't see that train coming well then they are just blind as it gets. This has been tried before and it failed!!!! Why oh Why does Sprint want to go down this road again? Dumb.... just dumb! BTW I work for this company and I have a VZ phone. My own company does not provide coverage where I live with CDMA and the iDEN is workable, but only from one little shot in my house. I live down town in a town of 100,000 peps. It is sad when I can't even use a company phone and have to go outside the company to get cell coverage, plus I have to pay for it!!! So I don't even get the same perk as the rest of the employees! What a drag.
Posted by Anonymous | May 14, 2009 - 5:36pm
Sounds like you need to quit. If you are not happy with your job leave and find another one. Also the FO that you are describing should have been fired. We work our butts off over here repairing outages and helping the customers out. It is people like you that are giving this company a bad name. If we do get outsourced big deal if it makes your job worse NO one is making you stay.
Posted by Anonymous | May 15, 2009 - 7:44pm
LOL about the FO people being fired! LOL LOL
I am a 9 year Senior Tech and we still have dead beats on the staff.
I guess you and your manger never got the memo - You are not to roll to fix issues unless it is a S-1 outage so unless you have a lot of S-1 outages everyday you should be cooling your heals. This week I had only one S-1 outage. I sat at home and did nothing and guess what - that is what KC has told us to do! Again you must have missed the memo or you are just lying to try to make a point! In our market 7 techs are at 0% audits for the year and 0% PM's for the year... and you say there are no dead beats LOL LOL LOL Sir or Mam you have drunk the cool-aid!
Posted by Anonymous | May 16, 2009 - 5:28pm
In our market most techs are at 100% on audits, period and annual pm's. We are rolling everyday fixing heat related issues with Lucent cabinets and dropped call issues. Earlier last month I have had a tower crew at 6 sites repairing service effecting issues. I DO NOT see how you can just do nothing. By explain an S1 outage. Apparently I havent gotten the memo. Now as far as ON CALL we hardly run on anything anymore, mainly golden BTS sites and CNS customers.
Posted by Anonymous | May 16, 2009 - 5:59pm
"In our market most techs are at 100% on audits, period and annual pm's."
That is BS! You are laying! I just pulled the Business Objects EMPAC report for the nation. Not one user is at 100% in the nation not ONE, the closest is 52.25% I just pulled the Titan PM reports for the nation the other day, not one Titan user is at 100% and the closest is 63.17%.
Before you come here and lie get your facts in line!
Posted by Tom Roberts | May 17, 2009 - 9:09am
I jsut ran the audit reports and titan roports ofr our state too, to see if the person that said they were 100% could be true. In our state, one of the larger markets, we are not even close.
We also got the memo.... we don't roll on anything unless it impacts the customer. There was a national FO email that went out about spending money etc. and it laid out that we should not be doing anything unless it is hurting the customer, we only PM the site if we have to go to the site and fix a cutomer impacting issue. Aslo on call we are not to roll unless it is CNS or the site is more then 50% down, las month I has an entire secote off air all weekend, it was not a CNS nor was it 50% down. Last week I went to 1 site. But the week before I went to 2. I just don't see how anyone can be at 100% or even close to it and be complying with the company direction and handling 80 cell sites. Either they have not been complying with what the company has asked them to do by cutting back or they are pencil whipping PM's which is what I think is going on in the masses! I think we sould be outsoucred. Sprint is not in a position to run a EFO group, they have ran it into the ground and have no idea how to handle EFO. Maybe with thenew company running things they will come up with a better and more smoother way to run this group because right now we are only hurting the customer and that is a fact.
Posted by Anonymous | June 4, 2009 - 5:19pm
You guys should see the new "auto-ticket" process that is running in the control centers. It fails to route tickets to telco and delays dispatch. Management is forcing it onto the floor because they are too scared to report to the VP's that it doesn't work as someone had promised it would. The good ole boy network remains in-tact!
Posted by Anonymous | August 26, 2009 - 8:17pm
Get ready T-Mobile and AT&T, Ericsson is coming for you next and soon. It's already in the works.
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