RESTON, Va. and ST. LOUIS ? 11/08/2006 Sprint Nextel (NYSE: S) formally announced today a five-year agreement with Suddenlink Communications, the eighth-largest cable operator in the United States. The new contract awards Sprint Nextel the right to facilitate Suddenlink's residential telephone service targeted to 2.2 million households in Suddenlink franchise areas, including approximately 30,000 existing residential voice subscribers migrating to the Sprint Nextel solution. Approximately 1,000 small business customers also will be migrated to the Sprint Nextel VoIP Network as a result of this transaction.
Sprint Nextel now serves cable companies with a cumulative reach of more than 30 million homes passed. Cable telephony service is available to customers across 1,200 rate centers and 22 states today and will expand to 43 states in 2007. The new five-year agreement marks Sprint Nextel's continued expansion into the cable market, creating a revenue stream with strong growth potential. Sprint Nextel plans to continue to use its telecom assets and communications expertise to expand its delivery of telephony solutions to the cable industry.
"We are very pleased to be partnering with Sprint Nextel to expand telephone service across our footprint," said Suddenlink Chief Executive Officer Jerry Kent. "Our customers are demanding the triple-play of television, Internet, and phone service ? and this agreement puts us one step closer to responding to that demand."
Kent said that phone service launches in 2007 will be announced on a market-by-market basis.
As part of the agreement, Sprint Nextel will carry local and long-distance traffic for Suddenlink residential and commercial customers and provide turnkey telephone services such as enhanced 911 services, network interconnection facilities, new and ported telephone number management, relay systems, directory assistance, operator services and a full suite of other local exchange carrier services. Digital phone calls begin on the Suddenlink managed network utilizing its softswitch architecture. All calls to consumers and businesses not served by Suddenlink will be completed over the Sprint Nextel nationwide network. From the customer's perspective, their inbound and outbound calls will continue to be seamless and provide the same quality of service they would expect from their local telephone company.
"Our vision for the cable initiative, whether its wireline or wireless, is to deliver compelling, integrated services that provide unique value to customers," said John Garcia, Sprint Nextel senior vice president of strategic partners. "This agreement with Suddenlink is illustrative of our company's growing importance in the cable sector."