NEW ORLEANS-Sprint Corp. said business customers will be eligible for a credit of 10 percent of their monthly wireless data bills if service quality falls below certain levels.
Sprint said service level agreements, or SLAs, are intended to erase artificial barriers between wireless and wireline solutions and encourage greater wireless data usage among business customers.
“By making businesses as comfortable with the performance of their wireless networks as they are on the wireline side, we can deliver the predictability and control they need for their wireless communications,” said Kathy Walker, executive vice president of network services at Sprint. “In turn, this will help encourage greater use of wireless for both voice and data. Sprint is confident in our network and the ability to perform at world-class levels. As with our wireless voice SLAs, we’re putting real teeth into this promise-credits back if we miss.”
The new wireless data SLAs provide the following:
- Less than 2 percent data blocks-If the national average wireless data blocks for the Sprint-owned CDMA network is 2 percent or more during any month, then the customer may be eligible for a service credit of 10 percent of the monthly recurring charge for the wireless data services. A wireless data session is considered blocked if the user is unable to establish the wireless data session while within the coverage area defined in the SLA due to failure of the Sprint-owned CDMA network. The coverage area does not currently include affiliate networks.
- Less than 1 percent data drops-If the national average for the wireless data drops for the Sprint-owned CDMA network is 1 percent or more during any month, then the customer may be eligible for a service credit of 10 percent of the monthly recurring charge for the wireless data services. A wireless data session is considered dropped if the user experiences an uninitiated termination of a data service connection within the coverage area defined in the SLA. The coverage area does not include affiliate networks, and EV-DO performance is not measured for this metric.
- 99.5 percent wireless network data availability-If the national average wireless network data availability for the Sprint-owned CDMA network during any month is less than 99.5 percent, then the customer may be eligible for a service credit of 10 percent of the monthly recurring charge for the wireless data services. The availability of network elements used to support a data session determines the overall service availability. The coverage area does not currently include affiliate networks.
