December 2010 Newsletter

Convergence Connections

Sprint Named Top Provider MPLS and Receives PilotHouse Award for Second Year in a Row

As we near another year end, it's time to reflect back on some of the highlights from the previous 12 months. Besides having a strong year overall, Sprint received top honors for its MPLS network and for customer satisfaction from two prominent leading industry authorities. These awards go to show how Sprint's commitment to quality and service is paying off for its customers.

For the second consecutive year, Sprint has earned top honors in the Nemertes Research PilotHouse Award for MPLS Services. This year, Sprint posted the best overall score among MPLS service providers, had the highest scores in both the value and technology categories, and increased its customer service score by about four percent over 2009.

The PilotHouse Awards are based entirely on surveys of more than 2,000 IT decision makers, who rated their strategic partners for MPLS. There are no outside influences on the survey respondents, who rank the MPLS providers in the areas of value, technology, and customer service, and from those rankings, the overall scores are determined.

In the PilotHouse Awards scoring, value is based on the belief by the IT professionals surveyed that they are getting what they pay for. Technology represents how the surveyed decision makers perceive the sophistication of the underlying technology in the network. Customer service ratings are based on how survey respondents believe the provider performs in areas such as response time to problems, service received from account teams, the RFP process, and issues surrounding service level agreements.

According to the Nemertes summary of the awards, Sprint's focus "on customer service, and a leading-edge approach to high-speed wireless is paying dividends among those who deploy its services." Also, the organization added, "Sprint's innovation in areas such as Quality of Service, SIP trunking integration with MPLS services, and emerging high-speed wireless access options as a result of its partnership with Clearwire and its WiMAX network allowed Sprint to score the highest of all providers in technology."

Why does Sprint do so well in the Nemertes PilotHouse surveys? It is because of the unparalleled features and benefits of the Sprint Global MPLS network. These include far-reaching service flexibility, real-time Class of Service at no additional charge, industry-leading Service Level Agreements, and 3G/4G wireless access options. The global network reaches 165 countries around the world via a combination of facilities-based architecture and strategic partner network-to-network Interfaces.

Sprint Global MPLS is also the optimal foundation for enabling enterprise mobility, allowing customers to securely connect to the business applications they need, virtually wherever they are. The Sprint holistic approach to enterprise mobility gives customers the confidence that they can rely on Sprint to mobilize their businesses.

Paget Alves, president of the Business Markets Group, reacted to Sprint winning top PilotHouse honors for the second consecutive year by noting that "MPLS is the core of our converged solutions strategy, enabling voice, video, and data via a single IP connection so businesses can reduce costs, improve employee productivity, and streamline their networks. MPLS also offers a flexible network foundation that scales for growth and allows for easier adoption of next generation technologies.

Click here for more information on the benefits of MPLS and to listen to what Eric Krapf with Enterprise Connect / NoJitter.com, Robin Gareiss with Nemertes Research and Mike McRoberts with Sprint have to say about Sprint's PilotHouse Award and enabling WAN convergence.


For more information on Sprint's PilotHouse Award from Nemertes Research, click here or visit sprint.com/convergence to download more information on Sprint Global MPLS.
Learn more about MPLS with these two great blogs: What Makes MPLS Possible and MPLS: Looking Under the Hood, both at SeamlessEnterprise.com.

Sprint Takes Top Honors in Latest Business Customer Survey by ATLANTIC-ACM

It doesn't get any more honest than when customers give their unvarnished assessment of service providers. That's why Sprint is so proud that it took top honors in yet another unbiased survey of business customers, this time by the ATLANTIC-ACM research and consulting firm.

The 2010 ATLANTIC-ACM Business Connectivity Report, based on a survey of more than 5,000 business customers, reflected Sprint's strong standing among these customers in key product and service categories.

For example, Sprint ranked first among national carriers* in the following categories:

  • Wireline Business Customer Service
  • Wireline Enterprise Voice Value
  • Small Business Wireless Value

Sprint tied with another carrier for the top ranking in these five categories:

  • Wireline Enterprise Data Value
  • Wireline Business Brand
  • Wireline Business Provisioning
  • Wireline Business Sales Representatives
  • Wireline Business Provisioning

In ATLANTIC-ACM's view, the survey results represent "a comprehensive overview of the business connectivity landscape from the perspective of business and enterprise customers." It is designed to showcase carriers' strengths and reveal their weaknesses relative to competitors, to give business customers some benchmarks for selecting a service provider.

In this case, the strong Sprint performance in the ATLANTIC-ACM survey demonstrates Sprint's momentum in the business market, which has now not only been validated by experts and market watchers, but also by customers.

Of the latest survey, Paget Alves, president of the Business Markets Group, noted, "Sprint continues to build its business brand around reliability, which customers continue to validate. Businesses increasingly want a carrier partner they can count on to give them what they want most: value, high-quality customer care, and business solutions derived from the best technology in the market today. We've worked to become that reliable partner."

*National carriers include AT&T, Century Link,
Global Crossing, Level 3, Qwest, and Verizon