[Bibbin]

"Sprint Nextel Corp. said Monday it is reclaiming about 240 jobs that it transferred to Ericsson Operations three years ago under a contract to run and maintain its network." FULL ARTICLE

Could this be a sign that Sprint wants more insight and control over NV progress?

[Pyramid-3]

No it probably means that they're unhappy with the level of service they get from Ericsson so they're whittling down a small portion of their outsourcing contract with them and pulling a small bit of service back in house. They could be anyone, internal help desk, some piece of monitoring, contract compliance, logistics, order fulfillment, etc

[Gameross]

Actually, it probably means they will save money by removing the middleman.

The people they're bringing back already have the needed experience.

[Pyramid-3]

Typically they bring them back and then let most of them go in 18 months thereby ensuring a new crop of know-nothings they got for half pay to follow shortly. Since they no longer have those jobs through a vendor there's no longer any service level agreement for performance and those jobs brought back in house are free to do as weak and as horrible a job as possible, as long as it costs a nickel less than they were paying before.

[menmygn2]

Originally Posted by Pyramid-3

Typically they bring them back and then let most of them go in 18 months thereby ensuring a new crop of know-nothings they got for half pay to follow shortly. Since they no longer have those jobs through a vendor there's no longer any service level agreement for performance and those jobs brought back in house are free to do as weak and as horrible a job as possible, as long as it costs a nickel less than they were paying before.

Yep!

[MophoManners]

Originally Posted by Bibbin

"Sprint Nextel Corp. said Monday it is reclaiming about 240 jobs that it transferred to Ericsson Operations three years ago under a contract to run and maintain its network." FULL ARTICLE

Could this be a sign that Sprint wants more insight and control over NV progress?

This is in reaction to Ericsson dropping the ball on 5,000 carrier adds that sprint was paying for that never were integrated or deployed it's they are all in the backhaul side..

Side-note sprint is driving the ship on the NV things and they have so many layers it's failing as it's almost solely dependent on the base station manufacture out of these Ericson is doing better ( this is not the same day to day sprint operations division of Ericsson) as they have had time to get their ducks in a row deploying VERIZON LTE base stations..

[Bibbin]

Originally Posted by MophoManners

This is in reaction to Ericsson dropping the ball on 5,000 carrier adds that sprint was paying for that never were integrated or deployed it's they are all in the backhaul side..

Side-note sprint is driving the ship on the NV things and they have so many layers it's failing as it's almost solely dependent on the base station manufacture out of these Ericson is doing better ( this is not the same day to day sprint operations division of Ericsson) as they have had time to get their ducks in a row deploying VERIZON LTE base stations..

Your post is somewhat difficult to follow. Out of curiosity, what really happens when customers initiate "trouble tickets?"

[MophoManners]

Not much if a bunch of them pile up it might spark someone in the office to look at it.. Life on the sprint network is 100% reactive. As before if a sprint tech as driving down the road and dropped a call they would slam on the brakes and recreate the situation then figure out what was going on.. now? everyone can care less.. Ericsson can care less then that. They get paid to do certain things and of it's not in the contract that that they need to do it they don't. It's a frustrating place to work. Especially if you are used to site ownership and the pride that goes with it.

[Bibbin]

Originally Posted by MophoManners

Not much if a bunch of them pile up it might spark someone in the office to look at it.. Life on the sprint network is 100% reactive. As before if a sprint tech as driving down the road and dropped a call they would slam on the brakes and recreate the situation then figure out what was going on.. now? everyone can care less.. Ericsson can care less then that. They get paid to do certain things and of it's not in the contract that that they need to do it they don't. It's a frustrating place to work. Especially if you are used to site ownership and the pride that goes with it.

That's exactly what I suspected. Sprint doesn't handle the actually maintenance of sites so it'd have to be a regional outage for them to actually act on service complaints. Even then, their first reaction is usually to deny it's the network and blame it on the customer's phone.

[SLME]

Sprint is now regretting the Ericsson contract?!?!

It was one of Sprint's dumbest decisions outside of the Nextel merger.

[chamb]

Originally Posted by SLME

Sprint is now regretting the Ericsson contract?!?!

It was one of Sprint's dumbest decisions outside of the Nextel merger.

Think about this one. Sprint CSR's were fairly good many years ago until Sprint contracted to have that outsourced and much of it went overseas. Eventually to stop the howling, they had to do a 180 and bring the CSR's home. While it is still not perfect, it sure did improve once they stopped outsourcing this critical function to people that were not informed and had no interest in anything except the next paycheck.
Now we have maintenance outsourced to Ericsson. When did the network fall apart? Maybe shortly after Ericsson took over the maintenance??? One thing for sure, a contractor is in business to make money and will try to do the job as cheaply as they can to not only make money, but make as much money as they possibly can. Sprint probably saved a bunch of money by turning the maintenance over to Ericsson, but Ericsson employees will never feel as responsible as Sprint employees who can be held accountable. And ---- Think about this one ---- Many of the Ericsson employees are probably former Sprint employees that were transferred to Ericsson and probably took some type of cut when the transfer was made against their will. I might guess that many have an "attitude" but need the paycheck.

[Kendog210]

Originally Posted by chamb

Think about this one. Sprint CSR's were fairly good many years ago until Sprint contracted to have that outsourced and much of it went overseas. Eventually to stop the howling, they had to do a 180 and bring the CSR's home. While it is still not perfect, it sure did improve once they stopped outsourcing this critical function to people that were not informed and had no interest in anything except the next paycheck.
Now we have maintenance outsourced to Ericsson. When did the network fall apart? Maybe shortly after Ericsson took over the maintenance??? One thing for sure, a contractor is in business to make money and will try to do the job as cheaply as they can to not only make money, but make as much money as they possibly can. Sprint probably saved a bunch of money by turning the maintenance over to Ericsson, but Ericsson employees will never feel as responsible as Sprint employees who can be held accountable. And ---- Think about this one ---- Many of the Ericsson employees are probably former Sprint employees that were transferred to Ericsson and probably took some type of cut when the transfer was made against their will. I might guess that many have an "attitude" but need the paycheck.

Coming from the contractor side I can say this as I have seen it first hand. Contractors also purposely delay the projects. They work very slowly and try to prolong the contract as long as they can. The longer it takes, the more money they make and the longer they have a job. As a contractor you are never guaranteed another contract afterwards and therefore generally try to keep your current contract going as long as you can.

With that said how is Sprint upgrading to LTE? They are doing the work themselves or contracting it out?

Lets hope they have some kind of cut off date in the contract. If the company doesn't finish by a certain time they get fined or something.

Generally though most contracts never finish in the projected times. They usually always go over budget and take longer than projected.

[Ponyhntr]

Originally Posted by chamb

And ---- Think about this one ---- Many of the Ericsson employees are probably former Sprint employees that were transferred to Ericsson and probably took some type of cut when the transfer was made against their will. I might guess that many have an "attitude" but need the paycheck.

My wife is one of those former Sprint, now Ericsson employees. This is not the case for her. She actually got a raise, a promotion (actually a couple since then), and has better (arguably) benefits than when she was with Sprint. She also works her but off no matter who signs the paycheck. She's been putting in 60+ hours a week trying to keep up with her workload. Ericsson has also been doing layoffs, it's just not as public as Sprint. Bad thing is they have also added 80+ positions overseas in her department. There are only 4 of them here in the States. I will agree that the overseas positions probably could care less, hence why her workload has gone through the roof.