In the world of telecom in the US, Sprint still holds the number three position ahead of T-Mobile, but significantly behind AT&T and Verizon. While both Sprint and T-Mobile actively fight to get ahead and claim marketshare from both of the two biggest players in the market, T-Mobile has been the most aggressive of the two in the past couple of years, and that’s due to its CEO John Legere and his unique tactics. Now that Sprint has replaced Dan Hesse with Marcelo Claure, it looks like some big things are going to be happening at the carrier, and it’s going to be a multi-faceted approach too. First we saw that there could be a serious pricing war going on for unlimited everything plans, and now it looks like we’re starting to see the changes to the back end that so many have called for.
Sprint’s NetworkVision 2.0 strategy covers a wide variety of things, the most important of which might just be operations support system (OSS) changes, better known as the systems that manage network inventory, service provisioning, fault management and network configuration. These systems are vital to the back end not just because it keeps things in order, but because it keeps them running efficiently and quickly. Sprint’s network is generally on the slower end in most markets anymore, and it’s likely because their network has effectively run away from them, being assigned to too many other vendors and devices without receiving enough upgrades to balance things out.
NetCracker, an OSS vendor that’s now working with Sprint on their improved 4G LTE and Spark network rollouts, is working on a way to inventory all of Sprint’s network components, not just including the physical ones, but the companies Sprint has acquired that are using its spectrum, the different lines of business that run through its network, and of course all the traffic that migrates between networks and markets from day to day. This is a daunting task for sure, but NetCracker and Sprint are determined to nail this down and churn out the best network possible when all things are said and done. This new focused view of Sprint’s network and all that encompasses it will give Sprint’s new CEO and the rest of the network engineering team the ability to make better decisions and nail down exactly what’s happened to the Now Network, and hopefully in the near future make it a truly amazing place to be.