Company: Sprint Nextel Corporation

Founders: The company is the result of a merger between Sprint and Nextel corporations.

Industry: Sprint Nextel Corp. specializes in wireless telecommunications network. More commonly known as a cell phone carrier, the company also offers global Internet services.

History:

With 48.1 million customers all over the United States, Sprint Nextel Corporation is currently one of the largest wireless service providers in the country. The company was created in 2005 when Sprint Corporation purchased Nextel Communications, a firm that focuses on push-to-talk communications system.

The foundation of Sprint Nextel Corporation can be traced back to 1898 when Cleyson Leroy Brown and Carlos Florendo, Jr. formed the Brown Telephone Company in the small town of Abilene, Kansas. This company was a landline firm that operated as a competitor to Bell System, the AT&T monopoly that served the US from 1877 to 1984.

In 1972, Brown changed the name, and the company was known as United Telecommunications. By this time, the firm provided telephone services in areas around the Midwest and South.

There were many factors that brought about the formation of Sprint. One of these is the Southern Pacific Railroad (SPC), which operated the Southern Pacific Communications Corporation (SPCC) during the early twentieth century. This company specialized in communication services through the railroad system. However, in the 1970s, when everyone switched from railroads to radio systems, the company was rendered useless. In 1983 however, General Telephone (GTE) purchased the entire SPCC brand in line with its goal of creating company than could compete with AT&T. The merge then resulted to the firm called GTE Sprint.

From the 1990s onwards, Sprint has been primarily owned by United Telecom, which began Sprint International, a company that provided international long distance calls. By the late 1990s, the company entered the wireless communications industry and started offering cell phones to customers. The wireless communication component continued to flourish in the early 2000s and the company eventually gained Nextel.

As of last year, Sprint Nextel was one of the strongest mobile phone companies in the world.

Leadership:

Dan Schulman – President, Prepaid Group
Jeff Auman – Vice President, Marketing