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Sprint Corporation – An American Telecommunication Company With its Root Back in the 19th Century.

Sprint Corporation, in the past 122 years, has taken up various names and went through multiple mergers and acquisitions. Originally founded by Cleyson Brown and Jacob Brown, Sprint Corporation is currently a part of T-Mobile US as a result of the merger that took place in April 2020. The history of Sprint Corporation is related to two other companies, namely, Brown Telephone Company and Southern Pacific Railroad from where it originated. The main services of the company are mobile telephony, wireless communication, internet services, and broadband. The headquarters of the company is based in Kansas, US. After the merger of Sprint with T-Mobile US last year, Sprint has become a subsidiary of T-Mobile and the brand name has also been phased out.

The Parent Companies

In 1899, the Brown Telephone Company was established by Clayson Brown. The company was established to avail of telephone services for the first time in rural Kansas. In 1900, the Brown Telephone Company rolled out its first long-distance circuit and grew popular in no time. It gave a strong competition to Bell Telephone Company which was the most famous operator in those days. In 1911, Brown merged the company with other independent entities to form the United Telephone Company. The name of the company changed to United Utilities followed by United Communications in 1972.

The second parent company, Southern Pacific Railroad, was founded in the 1860s as a subsidiary of Southern Pacific Company (SPC). SPC formed a new division in the 1970s to leverage the power of existing communication technology for long-distance calling. This division was named Southern Pacific Communication Company. With the expanding business of SPC, it gave strong competition to AT&T and a strong rivalry existed between them. In the mid-1970s, SPC decided to change its name to SPRINT which is the acronym for Southern Pacific Railroad Internal Networking Telephony.

Sprint Corporation in the 20th Century

In 1983, a company called GTE Group acquired SPRINT and the long-distance telephony of SPC. After three years, a merger took place between the GTE Group and United Telecommunications Inc. property, US Telecom which named the new company as US Sprint Communications. After a few years, United Telecom gained full control of the US Sprint and officially renamed the company Sprint Corporation. The next decade was followed by Sprint entering the Canadian market and forming an alliance with Call-Net Enterprises. In 1995, it established a new partnership with American Personal Communications for creating digital wireless networks. Sprint struck deals with another company called RadioShack for communication services and products across the US market.

Present Days

In 2004, a massive merger took place between the Sprint Corporation and Nextel Communications. The new company was known as Sprint Nextel Corporation. When this merger took place, both the companies were two of the leading telecommunication companies in the US. In the next few years, Sprint Nextel acquired a series of companies including US Unwired, IWO Holdings, Gulf Coast Wireless, Alamosa Holdings, Enterprise Communications, and many more. This continuous series of acquisitions of both affiliates and non-affiliates took place till 2009.

After the merger, the company had two headquarters, one in Virgian and the other one in Kansas. Dan Hesse, CEO of Sprint realized that it sent the wrong message to the public and hence made a single headquarters of the company in Kansas. In 2012, a renowned Japanese telecommunications company, SoftBank showed interest in buying a 70 percent stake at Sprint Nextel for $20.1 billion. The acquisition was completed after a year when the US Federal Communications Commission approved it. Last year, the company was acquired by T-Mobile US and the brand name of Sprint ceased to exist.

Founders of Sprint Corporation

Cleyson Brown is the main founder of the Brown Telephone Company which eventually became Sprint Corporation and is now a part of T-Mobile US. Jacob Brown, brother of Cleyson Brown helped him to found the Brown Telephone Company. Cleyson Brown is mainly famous for founding the Brown Telephone Company but he was also a famous innovator and a philanthropist. Before founding the telephone company, he established Abilene Electric Light Works for generating electricity.

Annasha

Annasha Dey is an NIT student, who apart from studying engineering is also a content writer. She has a great interest in photography, writing, reading novels, and travelling as well. She is a foodie who loves socializing and hanging out with her friends. She is also a trained Kathak dancer and a big fashion enthusiast. Dey also loves watching TV series, which includes F.R.I.E.N.D.S. and Big Bang Theory. To be a better writer she prefers to read more

How John Cioffi Gave Life to the Internet Through the Broadband

Leave a Comment / Founder, Inspiration, Tech Story / By Athulya

Most of us cannot imagine a world without the internet now. We depend on it for everything from reading this article to shopping for groceries. However, forty years ago, the internet barely existed with the World Wide Web years away. Since then we have come a long way to technology such as 5G and crypto-currency, thanks to the internet. For most of this, we have engineer John Cioffi to thank. He realized that the copper wires used as phone lines could supply fast data to homes. This move made it possible for homes to get the internet without creating new networks. Years later, Joseph Lechleider turned that dream into a reality, and modern broadband came to be. Here’s a look at how those two men singlehandedly revolutionized modern-day internet and our lives.

What John Cioffi Did

Cioffi realized while at American Bell Laboratories in the 1970s, that someday the entire world would use the internet. However, making this affordable wasn’t an easy task. To make the process affordable, he imagined using copper telephone wires which have been around since a hundred years earlier. He moved to Stanford University by the end of the ’70s and began working on this concept. He tried to fit hundreds of data channels alongside phone conversations without causing disturbances. Cioffi named the technology DMT or Discrete Multitone. However, the high interference of the lines became a problem. So he built a device to switch data between channels to prevent this, creating the first broadband modem.

Joseph Lechleider’s Contribution

Cioffi’s broadband modem lowered the interference but not for high rate data sending. By then, Joseph Lechleider was working as an engineer at Bell Labs which had become Bellcore. He discovered that sending large data in one direction and smaller in the opposite could solve this problem. Hence, this process became the basis for the Asymmetric Digital Subscriber Line technology. ADSL technology works great for people who don’t need to upload much data.

Broadband becomes Universal

Cioffi founded Amati in 1992 to build broadband modems, while companies such as BT began working on ADSL technology. Meanwhile, customers began using dial-up modems to access the internet via their phone lines. Since DSL required signal processors, they were too expensive to implement early on. However, as the 2000s rolled in, microchips became more affordable and internet connections became over a hundred times faster.

Cioffi then successfully worked on Dynamic Spectrum Management to make the transmission even faster. Soon enough, John Cioffi became the Father of DSL, with over 100 patents in the field. He works on projects to improve internet speeds and is a Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers. Lechleider died in 2015 becoming inducted into the US National Inventors Hall of Fame in 2013.

Continued Success

Cioffi also served as a professor of electrical engineering at Stanford University, supervising over 100 Ph.D. students over two decades. He left Stanford in 1991 to found Amati Corporation, building the world’s first DSL modem. The modem soon became a gold-standard as it was 4 times faster than its competitors, also being the first to transmit live television via a phone line. He sold Amati Communications to Texas Instrument for $440 million three years after taking it public in 1995. Cioffi returned to Stanford, to research on Dynamic Spectrum Management and vectored VDSLs, which will soon be launched in the US.

In 2003, Cioffi founded ASSIA which now has over 80 million worldwide subscribers and retired from Stanford six years later. The company makes software and hardware for companies involved in providing users high-speed Internet services. His wife works as the Executive Vice President owing to her keen sense of people, and management skills. His design for the VDSL powers almost 98% of the 500 million DSL connections the world now uses.

DSL accounts for more than 70% of the world’s broadband, more than even cable and fiber combined. ASSIA controls 90% of the U.S. market with regards to DSL management software, with its product making about $100 million annually for its users. The company began with three people, and by 2011 had over 170 employees. With the DSL industry has grown to one worth over $120 billion worldwide, it goes without saying that we have a lot to thank Cioffi for.

Athulya

Being a cinephile with a love for all things outdoorsy, Athulya never misses a chance to chase inspiring stories or poke fun at things, even when the subject is herself. Currently pursuing a degree in mechanical engineering, she is someone innately interested in technical and scientific research. Music reviews and op-eds define her as they allow her to explore different perspectives. Though sometimes she thinks she makes more sense playing the guitar than she does while writing.

Verizon to Step into 5G Internet Service With its Home Broadband

News, Product / By Yashica Vashishtha

Last year, in the November, Verizon had indicated the launch of its 5G home network, by the end of 2018. It has been working on its 5G network for a long time and finally, it has announced its launch to be on October 1st this year. The 5G home is simply concentrated on providing faster wireless network, that will be a huge growth in the mobile technology. The 5G home internet will be available in the American metro cities including Houston, Indianapolis, Los Angeles, and Sacramento, and will be simply called 5G home.

The world’s first 5G commercial service, 5G home, is currently open for subscriptions and the installation will start on 1st of October this year. The 5G home is going to provide a basic speed of 300 Mbps and can reach 1Gbps, with no data caps, depending upon the locality and the signal range.

The early subscribers will get benefits like free installation, free YouTube and complimentary services for three months, and, also a free Chromecast or Apple TV 4K. The cost for the Verizon’s existing customers for the 5G home will be $50 a month, while the new customers will be charged $70, for their monthly subscription.

The 5G home is not purely a 5G service, but, is claimed to be faster than the 4G and LTE data networks. The 5G home is restricted to only a few cities and is a home broadband network. T-mobile has also announced a better 5G network, in competition with the Verizon 5G service and companies like Sprint and LG, are planning to launch the first 5G smartphones in the coming year.

Yashica Vashishtha

Yashica is a Software Engineer turned Content Writer, who loves to write on social causes and expertise in writing technical stuff. She loves to watch movies and explore new places. She believes that you need to live once before you die. So experimenting with her life and career choices, she is trying to live her life to the fullest.

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