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Pinnacle Airlines Selects Sprint for Comprehensive Integrated Wireless and Wireline Solution

Dépèche transmise le 8 juillet 2009 par Business Wire

Pinnacle Airlines Selects Sprint for Comprehensive Integrated Wireless and Wireline Solution

OVERLAND PARK, Kan.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Sprint (NYSE:S) and Pinnacle Airlines today announced an agreement for Sprint to provide a comprehensive suite of integrated wireline and wireless solutions to Pinnacle, one of the airline industry’s largest regional carriers.

The agreement encompasses a wide range of voice and data services. Wireline services include MPLS network services, SIP Trunking, Mobile Integration and international long distance, and wireless services include mobile broadband, Wireless WAN (Wide Area Network) with DataLink, Land Mobile Radio (LMR) and in-building coverage. Sprint will supply more than 1,100 voice and data devices to support the converged solution.

Pinnacle Airlines Corp.’s two operating subsidiaries, Pinnacle Airlines, Inc. and Colgan Air, Inc., have 6,000 employees and fly over 1,000 daily flights transporting 13 million passengers a year to 144 cities and towns in North America. The corporate headquarters is located in Memphis, Tenn. Airport hub operations are located in Atlanta, Boston, Detroit, Newark, Washington Dulles, Houston, LaGuardia, Memphis and Minneapolis.

“Pinnacle is growing with North American operations stretching from Canada to the Caribbean, so it’s critical that our communications capability keep pace with our needs in a way that’s reliable, efficient and flexible,” said Jayne Pendergast, Director of Information Technology for Pinnacle Airlines Corp. “Sprint designed a comprehensive solution that integrates our wireline and wireless needs, allows us to achieve increased productivity across multiple functions and accommodates our continued growth in a cost-effective way.”

Pinnacle will utilize a broad sweep of wireless and wireline business solutions offered by Sprint and its business partners, including infrastructure provided by Cisco.

“This is a prime example of a business that’s effectively using integrated communications as a strategic tool to support rapid growth, in spite of today’s challenging economic conditions,” said Jaime Jones, senior vice president, Sprint Business Markets Group. “Sprint is pleased to bring its mobile integration expertise to the table for Pinnacle, along with a large portion of our wireless and wireline solutions portfolio.”

Sprint serves Pinnacle Airlines through its newly formed Business Markets Group (BMG). Composed of more than 4,000 sales, support, marketing and operations personnel, Sprint’s BMG is dedicated solely to enterprise, general business and public sector customers. BMG offers a unique combination of 3G and 4G technologies and applications, including integrated wireless-wireline services. The Sprint BMG unit delivers wireless, wireline and converged solutions for companies, drawing on the nation’s most dependable 3G mobile broadband network,*,the fastest national push-to-talk network (based on call setup), and a comprehensive solutions portfolio of devices and applications.

About Sprint Nextel

Sprint Nextel offers a comprehensive range of wireless and wireline communications services bringing the freedom of mobility to consumers, businesses and government users. Sprint Nextel is widely recognized for developing, engineering and deploying innovative technologies, including two wireless networks serving more than 49 million customers at the end of the first quarter of 2009; industry-leading mobile data services; instant national and international push-to-talk capabilities; and a global Tier 1 Internet backbone. For more information, visit www.sprint.com.

About Pinnacle Airlines Corp.

Pinnacle Airlines Corp. is the parent company of Pinnacle Airlines, Inc. and Colgan Air, Inc. Pinnacle Airlines, Inc. operates a fleet of 141 regional jets in the United States, Canada, the Bahamas, Mexico, U.S. Virgin Islands, and Turks and Caicos Islands as Northwest Airlink and Delta Connection. Colgan Air, Inc. operates a fleet of 48 regional turboprops as Continental Connection, United Express and US Airways Express. Pinnacle Airlines Corp. operating units fly over 1,000 daily flights and transport 13 million passengers a year to 144 cities and towns in North America. The corporate headquarters is located in Memphis, Tenn. Airport hub operations are located in Atlanta, Boston, Detroit, Newark, Washington Dulles, Houston, LaGuardia, Memphis and Minneapolis.

* “Dependable” based on independent, third-party drive tests for 3G data connection success, session reliability and signal strength for the top 50 most populous markets from January 2008 to February 2009.