KANSAS CITY, Mo., Jan. 1 /PRNewswire/ -- Sprint (NYSE: FON, PCS): The
following statement may be attributed to Russ Robinson, director of corporate
communications, Sprint. It was issued to the press during a 9 a.m. (CT) news
conference at Sprint World Headquarters.
Good morning and welcome to the Year 2000. I am Russ Robinson, director
of Sprint corporate communications and a member of Sprint's Y2K team. As you
know there has been a tremendous amount of concern and speculation about what
would happen to our computer and telephone systems when we rolled-over to the
Year 2000.
So, I want to give you a quick overview of what we have done to prepare
for it and of our experiences over the last couple of days. After this brief
statement, I'll answer any questions that I can, as long as they aren't too
technical.
In 1996, Sprint established a corporate-wide plan to address Y2K issues.
Over the last three years, we have spent about $315 million to inventory,
assess, renovate, test and deploy systems throughout the corporation. Earlier
this year, we completed remediation of all our systems - local, long distance
and Sprint PCS - and began extensive testing with other carriers, equipment
manufacturers and key customers. In addition, our local division worked with
various Emergency 9-1-1 agencies to insure the reliability of emergency
services.
The first real test for us came on September 9, 1999. Numerically, that
is 9-9-99. That number is significant because in many old programs, that was
a termination code that signaled computers to stop processing data or to stop
performing certain specific operations. We saw 9-9-99 come and go with no
problems. And that was a good sign.
As the New Year approached, each division set up an operations center,
tested their equipment and tested contingency plans. We established a central
reporting structure so we could all benefit from each other's experiences and
so we could watch for any trends that might develop as the year rolled over.
Sprint has more than 2,500 additional people working through this weekend
to keep an eye on our networks and to respond to any problems that may arise.
In addition, the rest of our engineering and networking staff is basically
"on-call" so that if some unforeseen problems do occur, we can throw a lot of
resources and talent at it very quickly. The good news is that hasn't been
necessary.
At 5 a.m. yesterday, we put our plans into operation and watched the Year
2000 roll across the globe, beginning in Auckland, New Zealand. Since
communications networks worldwide use much of the same equipment and operate
in much the same way, we believed that monitoring other systems for problems
could give us advanced warning of any problems within those systems.
Frankly, we didn't expect to see a lot of problems, especially within most
of the European systems, since we had already performed tests with many of
them. We anticipated some problems in developing countries that hadn't done
Y2K remediation work. But even in those countries we didn't see significant
problems that could be contributed to Y2K.
On the long distance side, the roll-over actually occurred at 6 p.m.
Kansas City time, since Sprint's long distance network is on Greenwich Mean
Time. That changeover came and went without any problems. We also expected
that congestion around midnight could cause problems as everyone picked up
their phones either to call friends or to see if the phones still worked.
We did see the number of phone calls increase. At its peak call volume
reached about 65 percent of the network's capacity. That's not enough to be a
concern.
Our local and PCS systems are keyed to local times, so those rollovers
occurred across the country at midnight. Other than some minor capacity
spikes, we didn't see any Y2K problems affecting our network performance.
With the exception of a few PCS calls in Manhattan, our customers - local,
long distance and Sprint PCS - were able to complete their calls just as they
always do. All of our interconnections with other carriers and suppliers
operated as usual. Our customer service centers were available to respond to
any customer issues.
So, I am pleased to report this morning, that the new millennium has begun
with our networks and systems performing just as expected. While it is still
possible that some minor problems may crop up in the future, there is no
reason to believe that there is anything lurking in our software that will
impact our systems.
SOURCE Sprint
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Related links:
http://www.sprint.com
CONTACT:
Russ Robinson, Director of Corporate
Communications of Sprint, 913-624-3417, or E-mail,
russ.robinson@mail.sprint.com
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