Unemployment is a serious pain point in America for both employers short on good talent and talent short on employment, so Sprint has announced that they’re going to take another step in their own fight against unemployment by expanding out to 79 new retail locations in Texas, which will create at least 550 jobs. The jobs that will be created by this move aren’t limited to retail salespeople and managers; more technical roles will also be brought on board, which means that the larger number of stores will represent an expansion in Sprint’s overall footprint for the state. It’s all set to happen before the end of this year, giving Sprint about 7 months to erect 79 brand new stores and booths, and find suitable staff for both the retail locations themselves and the network expansion and other duties that will go with them.
While 79 stores across a state as large as Texas may not sound like much on paper, this expansion is absolutely massive in relation to Sprint’s current operations in Texas. As of this writing, Sprint has 350 retail locations in Texas, and employs somewhere in the neighborhood of 2,700 Texans. That means that this expansion represents more than one sixth of their current operations, and will bring their store count in the Lone Star State above the 400 mark while bringing their employee count well above 3,000. According to Sprint, it’s their largest expansion in the area since they first started putting stores down.
The expansion reportedly comes at a good time for the area. Mike Hennigan, the regional VP in charge of the Texas area for Sprint, said that data usage in major metros like Dallas, Austin, and Houston has grown roughy 700% within the last five years. The move also comes hot on the heels of Sprint pumping up coverage in the area of Houston’s famous NRG Stadium, and rolling out expansions to key network technologies like three-channel carrier aggregation throughout Texas. Additionally, news of the expansion comes just a few days after the release of the Samsung Galaxy S8 and Galaxy S8 Plus. They are the second and third devices to boast compatibility with Sprint’s new HPUE service, a network expansion that takes advantage of Sprint’s massive 2.5GHz spectrum holdings to deliver extremely high speeds and low latency across wide areas. LG’s G6 flagship was technically the first to support HPUE, but Samsung’s dual flagships are likely to be more popular, potentially serving as a better poster child for HPUE than the G6 would have.