CTIA: Sprint unveils wireless services

By Denise Pappalardo
Network World, 03/14/05

Sprint announced Monday at CTIA Wireless 2005 that it is beefing up its wireless services for business users.

The carrier is launching its Extended Workplace remote access service at the show. Sprint briefly talked about the service earlier this month. Extended Workplace offers business users a secure platform to access their corporate VPN via Sprint's PCS Vision wireless data service, dial-up or wireless LAN.

The carrier teamed up with service provider Fiberlink, which also offers secure remote access services to business users, to develop a single, secure client that allows users to see all of their access options as they travel around the globe.

PCS Vision is available across the U.S., and Sprint has a network of 14,000 Wi-Fi hotspots.

Although the service does not include wired Ethernet locations, as competitors AT&T and MCI offer with their remote access services, there will be future releases of Extended Workplace that will likely include additional access options, says Barry Tishgart, senior director of product management at Sprint.

The service is available for $120 per month, per user for unlimited PCS Vision and Wi-Fi access. While the plan does include dial-up, users pay for that service based on how much they use. Users will pay $0.35 per hour for local dial-up, $2.95 per hour for toll-free dial-up and $1.40 per hour for domestic roaming off of Sprint’s network.

Sprint is also expected to announce the first wireless data service-level agreement (SLA) at the show.

Last summer Sprint became the first wireless service provider to offer an SLA for its mobile voice services for business customers.

Sprint’s wireless data SLA guarantees that the network will be available 99.5% of the time, that wireless data blocks will be less than 2% and that wireless data drops will be less than 1%.

If the carrier misses these metrics users are entitled to a 10% credit of their wireless data monthly recurring charge. In other words, if a company pays $1,000 per month for all of its wireless data services it will receive a $100 credit.

The credits are not proactive. Users must log in to a secure Sprint Web portal to view the carrier's monthly network performance statistics. If Sprint did not meet its SLA the user then has to request a credit.

“It's not the type of feature that's going to get customers to sign deals, but it might bring in more calls to Sprint,” says Bob Egan, president at consulting firm Mobile Competency.

One drawback to the SLA is that users are required to have someone internally manage and monitor the SLA, Egan says. Every month it's that person's responsibility to check the Web site, request a credit from Sprint if necessary and then follow up on those requests. “It requires resources that some users may not have,” he says.

Sprint's Tishgart points out that this is Sprint's first wireless data SLA and that it will continue to improve on the guarantee.

The company is also announcing the general availability of Sprint Managed Mobility Service. SMMS is a management tool that provides rate optimization, over-the-air software upgrades, security features and asset management features.

Imagistics started using the service last October as it was upgrading all of its employees' Treo wireless devices. Initially the company, based in Trumbull, Conn., used the tool to replace about 1,000 Treo 300s with Treo 600s. “Sprint managed the deployment without a hitch,” says John Chillock, vice president of customer service operations at Imagistics. “I could not have technicians in the field with devices that weren't running.”

Imagistics used the service and procurement piece of the SMMS service, which falls under asset management, to upgrade its employees' devices. It is also using the security features, which include zapping phones remotely if lost or stolen, rendering them useless in the hands of a thief and erasing any corporate data. The document management company is also using the billing tools that allow it to ensure its pooled minutes plan is meeting the company's needs, Chillock says.

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