Sprint's wireline managed router service takes top Nemertes award

These days, Sprint (NYSE: S) may be best known for its wireless service, but winning Nemertes' 2011 Pilothouse awards as a Top Provider among Market Challengers for Managed Router Services shows that it is still a major player in the wireline space selling IP-based services to SMBs and large enterprise customers.

Interestingly, Sprint overcame other large incumbent service providers and ranked high in technology, customer service and came second in overall value.

Monnie McGaffigan, Sprint Nextel

"We won a GSK award for customer service, which was based an independent survey done with 1,300 customers" - Monnie McGaffigan, Sprint

Nemertes' report revealed that business users of managed-router services rated Sprint a 4.6 out of 5 for technology, and 4.5 out of 5 for customer service. Sprint's suite of Managed Solutions includes everything from managed network, managed IP telephony and managed security.

Nemertes is not the only independent outside party to recognize Sprint's wireline business.

Monnie McGaffigan, vice president of Wireline, International and Strategic Alliances, Sprint, said that in addition to Nemertes they were also recognized by GSK.

"We won a GSK award for customer service, which was based an independent survey done with 1,300 customers where we were compared against the top three carriers and we came out as having the best level of care and account support," she said in an interview with FierceTelecom.  

While wireless is the larger part of Sprint's overall business and revenue base, its wireline brother still rakes in about $4 billion in revenue. Of that $4 billion figure, a big piece of it includes inter-company services, wholesale and retail services to businesses.

And while Sprint's wireline prominence may have been eclipsed in recent years by the wireless side of the service provider, McGaffigan said that she's seeing lots of new customer activity on the wireline side.

"We've had lots of new major enterprise customer wins this first half the year," she said. "Customers are buying wireline services again and we're definitely seeing the fact we're focused on it again that we're reaping a bit of the benefit there."

For more:
- see the release

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