Sprint

Sprint is headquartered in Overland Park, Kansas and is the third largest carrier in the United States.

Sprint traces its history back to 1899, when Cleyson and Jacob Brown started the Brown Telephone Company to provide telephone service to the farms surrounding Abilene, Kansas. By 1911 the company joined more than a dozen other independent service providers to form the United Telephone Company, eventually becoming United Telecommunications by the mid-1960s.

The name Sprint was originally an acroynm that stood for Switched Private Network Telecommunications, a rebranded switched voice service from Southern Pacific Communications (SPC). SPC and GTE would merge in the early 1980s, and United Telecom merged with that organization shortly thereafter. By 1992, the new organization was called Sprint Corp. Sprint's expansion into nationwide wireless service began in the mid-1990s, acquiring 1900 MHz PCS spectrum and building out a Code Division Multiple Access (CDMA) network — the same communications technology (operating at different frequencies) that powers rival Verizon's nationwide wireless network.

While Sprint has divested itself of local landline holdings, the company continues to derive revenue from long-distance service and through its Internet services. Sprint is a Tier 1 ISP that resells its services to major corporations and smaller ISPs.

• Sprint coverage map