Sprint Announces Network Agreements with Local Phone Companies for Initial Rollout of Revolutionary New Services...Sprint ION to Deliver High-Speed, High-Bandwidth Services to Businesses in Seven Major U.S.
Cities
---breaker breaker:
[[All, I borrowed this from the WCII thread where Steve G was good enough to post it the first time.
Does FON's announcement here seem to be just a little bit too convenient to the senses on first blush? Is there something else brewing behind the curtains that would explain the facility with which these announcement were made?...It seems to me that it is conceivable, that in some perverse way, the LECs could be gaining some piece of mind by all this, while FON goes through labor of the the leg work.
In Sprint, the LECs are at least dealing with a known entity, and they are getting a piece of the action while preserving their presence in the local loop, to boot. The notion that the LECs would be relegated to a transport utility at some point in time is not a new idea at all. Perhaps we are seeing the beginnings of the manifestation of that destiny here.
Think of it this way: The LECs would rather give in to such a scheme than see the wireless companies and the cablecos, both of whom could do a bang up job with ION, do it instead. Comments or other ideas on these hypotheses are welcome.
Best Regards, Frank Coluccio ]]
---remainder of the release follows:
KANSAS CITY, Mo., June 17 /PRNewswire/ -- Sprint today announced that it has secured key network access agreements with Southwestern Bell, GTE, BellSouth and Ameritech that will enable it to begin delivering advanced, high-speed, high-bandwidth services through Sprint ION, Integrated On-Demand Network. Additionally, Sprint unveiled the first major markets that will have access to the revolutionary new Sprint ION services as part of the first phase of its rollout.
This fall, Sprint will deliver unprecedented communications capabilities to large businesses in Chicago, Atlanta, Dallas, Houston and Kansas City. In addition, Sprint said agreements in New York and Denver are being finalized. ''On June 2, we announced a vision for the future of communications, and today we are taking another step toward bringing that vision to life,'' said William T. Esrey, Sprint's chairman and chief executive officer. ''We have the technology and the customers in place to begin making Sprint ION a reality in these major markets.
Sprint ION is the innovative new network that will enable Sprint to consolidate a business' disparate networks and to provide homes and businesses with virtually unlimited bandwidth over a single existing connection, delivering simultaneous voice, video calls and data services. The result of five years of confidential work, Sprint ION is a combination of numerous technological advances that Sprint has been privately testing with both businesses and consumers for the past year.
''We've already built the network that will handle the advances we've announced. These agreements enable us to deliver the unique, high quality services and network intelligence that is at the heart of Sprint ION to our first customers,'' Esrey said. ''While today's announcement is an important first step, it illustrates only the beginning of our deployment of Sprint ION. More cities and more features will soon be announced as our rollout builds momentum around the country.''
Sprint has been privately testing the revolutionary Integrated On-Demand Network capability with both businesses and consumers for the past year. Today's announcement launches the large business rollout of Sprint ION, which will continue throughout 1998. The service will be generally available to medium and small businesses in mid-1999, with consumer availability late in 1999.
Infrastructure in Place in Seven Key Cities
New York, Chicago, Atlanta, Dallas, Houston, Denver and Kansas City have several key elements in place that made them logical choices for the initial deployment of Sprint ION. Those elements include broadband metropolitan area networks (BMANs) and a strong, established business customer base that can immediately benefit from Sprint ION.
While Sprint's long distance network is already built and covers the entire United States, BMANs are high-bandwidth fiber optic rings that encircle cities. These BMANs already enable Sprint to provide a variety of advanced services and are now being enhanced to enable new Sprint ION services to pass within proximity of 70 percent of large businesses in these cities.
Sprint has secured key BMAN access agreements from Southwestern Bell in Dallas, Kansas City and Houston. Sprint also has an additional agreement for BMAN access in Dallas from GTE. In Atlanta, Sprint has secured BMAN from BellSouth and Ameritech is providing BMAN to Sprint in Chicago. Agreements in New York and Denver are still being finalized and announcements will be made when appropriate. In total, Sprint already has access to BMANs in 25 major markets nationwide, and will have BMANs in a total of 36 major markets by the end of the year. For smaller business locations, telecommuters, small/home office users and consumers who may not have access to BMANs, Sprint ION supports a myriad of the emerging broadband access services, such as Digital Subscriber Line (DSL).
Customers Already on Board
Several major corporations already have committed to beta test Sprint's Integrated On-Demand Network services in the months to come, including Hallmark Cards, Sysco Corp. [NYSE:SYY - news], Coastal States Management, Ernst & Young LLP, Silicon Graphics, St. Luke's-Shawnee Mission Health System, and Tandy.
Kansas City-based Hallmark Cards will be among the first to implement Sprint ION. ''This is the kind of technological innovation that can truly deliver bottom-line results and give Hallmark a competitive advantage,'' said Jim Miller, vice president of information technology at Hallmark Cards. ''Sprint's ION technology has the exciting potential to move Hallmark even closer to our customers by way of enhanced services, expanded communications, and lower costs. This potential is the driving force behind our decision to be one of the first customers to take advantage of the Sprint ION offering.''
Said Larry Hardin, director of operations and communications, information services, for Houston-based Sysco Corp., ''This will enable us to combine all of our traffic -- voice, data and video -- onto one path. Sprint is the first company to come to us with revolutionary technology like this that can be a reality so soon.''
For these businesses, and others like them, Sprint ION offers a significantly more efficient communications solution than today's model. High-speed, integrated communications will be available to corporate locations, branch offices, small businesses and the small office/home office worker. The result is an enhanced virtual private network that enables applications such as collaborative product development, supply-chain management, distance learning and telecommuting.
What Does Sprint ION Do?
Businesses will no longer be required to manage numerous complex networks but can rely on a truly integrated network that consolidates voice, video and data traffic while reducing costs. Sprint's ION allows businesses to expand dramatically their local and wide area networks and dynamically allocate bandwidth, thus paying only for what they use rather than having to purchase a set high-bandwidth capacity that often sits idle. Sprint ION will also set a new industry benchmark for service reliability, utilizing Sprint's pervasive deployment of synchronous optical network (SONET) rings across the United States.
At home, customers will be able to conduct multiple phone calls, receive faxes, run new advanced applications and use the Internet at speeds up to 100 times faster than today's conventional modems -- all simultaneously through a single connection. The need for multiple phone lines will be eliminated, and applications such as high-speed online interactive services, video calls and telecommuting will be readily accessible. Use of the Internet will be so fast that typical pages on the World Wide Web will pop up almost instantaneously.
Sprint is able to deliver this revolutionary new capability because its network supports a seamless, integrated service to the desktop over an Asynchronous Transfer Mode (ATM) backbone network. This network fabric provides the speed, flexible bandwidth, scalability, service consistency, security and telephone voice quality that no other protocol currently can deliver.
Sprint ION provides customers with robust voice, video and data services, along with the capability to customize multiple services, all combined with access to virtually unlimited bandwidth, available on demand, all the time, whether they are across town or across the country.
More information on Sprint ION is available at www.sprint.com or by calling 1-800-308-2140.
About Sprint
Sprint is a global communications company -- at the forefront in integrating long distance, local and wireless communications services and one of the world's largest carriers of Internet traffic. Sprint built and operates the United States' only nationwide all-digital, fiber optic network and is the leader in advanced data communications services. Sprint has $15 billion in annual revenues and serves more than 16 million business and residential customers.
SOURCE: Sprint Corp. |
