Sprint Employees Express Doubt About Ericsson Services Agreement

Sprint employees who are slated to be transferred to Ericsson in the wake of a services outsourcing deal between the two are worried about potential layoffs and movement of their services jobs overseas.

Sprint on Thursday said it signed a seven-year agreement with Ericsson under which Ericsson will handle the day-to-day services, provisioning, and maintenance for Sprint's CDMA, iDEN, and wireline networks.

Under the services deal, estimated by the two companies to be worth between $4.5 billion and $5.0 billion over the next seven years, Sprint will retain full ownership and control of its network assets.

Customers of Sprint will continue to work with Sprint employees as their main contact with the company, which will continue to control their user experience and support, while the services will be passed to Ericsson.

As part of the deal, which Sprint termed "Network Advantage," about 6,000 Sprint services employees will be transferred to become Ericsson employees during the third quarter of this year.

Several of those 6,000 employees have started blogging about their worries at The Kansas City Star's Sprint Connection Web site.

One writer, Freddie-777, said he expects there will be a year or so until what he termed the "Center Ops" begins moving to India, noting sarcastically that Indians "are smarter, have 10 times the work ethic, will work for less money, they arrive to work on time, they do not leave early, they do not IM with friends or surf the internet all day."

Freddie-777 went on to warn colleagues to "start saving your money folks and train for a new career outside of telecom and treat your new career with more respect."

Another writer, Dago, said that significant layoffs that Sprint itself was loathe to do could now be expected "regardless of what sort of feel-good lies the Sprint execs may be telling now."

Unknown297 agreed, saying that Sprint is trying to save face by not laying off employees, and instead will "wait until they get them over to Ericson [sic] and then have Ericson [sic] look like the bad guys when they start laying off those poor people and not giving them anything but a pink slip."

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