Sprint Nextel Corp. / S

About Sprint Nextel Corp.

2001 Edmund Halley Dr., Reston, Va. 20191
www.sprint.com | 703-433-4000 | Founded: 1899

Industry: Telecommunications | Category: Top 100 Companies

Created from the August merger of Kansas City-based Sprint Corp. and Reston's Nextel Communications Inc., Sprint Nextel spent much of the past year integrating its operations while trying to keep up in a fiercely competitive mobile phone market.
The former rivals easily won approval last summer for their merger from the Justice Department and the Federal Communications Commission. That's when the hard part began. In the months since, Sprint Nextel has rolled out a new ad campaign, quietly retiring the trench coat guy that had been Sprint's emblem for six years, and angling its advertising pitch more toward corporate users. It also acquired four of its affiliates, small wireless companies that had operated under its brand, and is on the verge of buying out Nextel Partners, which has about 1.6 million wireless subscribers. These transactions, and the merger, will bring Sprint Nextel's total mobile phone subscribers to 49.6 million, all but closing the gap with the nation's two largest providers: Cingular Wireless, which has 54.1 million, and Verizon Wireless, with 51.3 million subscribers.
The company also plans to spin off its local telephone subsidiary into a separate company named Embarq by the end of June. By ridding itself of the slow-growing local business, Sprint Nextel hopes to concentrate on exploiting what it projects will be surging demand for e-mail, music, Internet surfing and video on mobile phones in an increasingly wireless world. To help achieve that goal, the company in November joined forces with four major cable companies to create a venture that will make it easier for Sprint Nextel to stream live video to its cellphones. The deal will also allow the cable companies — Comcast Corp., Time Warner Cable, Cox Communications Inc. and Advance/Newhouse Communications Inc. — to sell a "quadruple play" of cable TV, phone service, fast Internet access and mobile phone service and to allow customers to pay a single bill.
That deal is designed to help the cable companies better compete against the nation's largest phone companies — AT&T Inc. and Verizon Communications Inc. — which are building new networks to offer their own bundles of telephone, Internet, TV and wireless service.
Sprint Nextel has trimmed staff over the past year, trying to do this through attrition where possible but saying that it cannot rule out layoffs. Excluding the local phone operation, the two companies had about 63,500 employees at the start of 2005. This was down to 62,000 when the merger closed and reached 60,000 by the end of last year.
The company aims to shed about another 2,400 jobs this year.

Chairman and CEO: Gary D. Forsee

CFO: Paul N. Saleh

2007 Financial Data

Total employees: 79,900 | Local employees: 5,500