By Cecilia Kang
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, February 13, 2008; 2:45 PM

Sprint Nextel said today it will move its Reston headquarters to Overland Park, Kan., where its maintains another corporate base, following America Online as the second major high-tech company in months to depart from the Washington region.

It was unclear how many employees at the Reston campus would be affected by the relocation, as the company is offering voluntary retirement packages as part of its plan to reduce staff worldwide by 4,000. Yet the wireless carrier said Sprint will continue to maintain sizable operations locally, reducing the number of office buildings it operates from nine to seven. A limited number of executives would be affected by the relocation, Spring said in a news release. The company has 60,000 employees around the globe; it employs 4,400 people in the Washington area.

The decision was widely expected and the latest move by new Chief Executive Dan Hesse to shake up the beleaguered wireless provider, which has lost more than 1 million subscribers in the last year to competitors and seen its stock price decline by 43 percent. After the merger between Sprint and Nextel in 2005, the combined companies maintained two corporate headquarters -- a symbol of the inefficiencies that have led to Sprint's financial troubles and tarnished its reputation among users, Hesse has said.

"After a thorough review, we determined that this change is necessary now so that our leadership team can concentrate on improving our company's operations and create a single, performance-based culture," Hesse said in a statement today.

Hesse took over the company in December after the ouster of Gary Forsee, who oversaw Sprint's troubled merger with Nextel. In the two months since he took over, Hesse has replaced its executive ranks with a new chief financial officer, chief marketing officer and president of sales and distribution. The company has also written off about $31 billion related to the Nextel merger. This week, it appointed to its board an activist shareholder who has pushed for sweeping changes at the firm.

Don't let the door hit ya' on the way out!

Sprint is one of the worst companies- all of these layoffs have no strategy behind them (just "reduce cost- not a plan behind remaining competitive)- they are sinking. It was stupid to take Nextel that had a chance and just rip it apart it as they are sinking themselves. I feel back for local employees who will be impacted.

yes they have been going down-hill steady since losing the NETWORX contract last year. what a blow that was.

Good riddance!! I often wonder what was going through the mind of the idiot that thought this was a good idea. Meshing two entirely different systems and cultures into one. Corporate creed was at the bottom of this for sure!! I wonder who at the FCC took the payola for this to take place! Time to check bank accounts!!

Sprint has always had a swiss cheese coverage and was known for crappy customer service long before NEXTEL joined in. NEXTEL was on the way out of the picture anyway in 2010. NEXTEL found a real sucker buyer for the NEXTEL customer base. What an ingenious way to get a huge influx of customers. Sell off a dying service to a bunch of idiots in the mid-west. String the customer along for a few years and then sucker punch them into the Sprint Network. Along with the merger came Sprint’s crappy customer service with contract extensions to keep the customer intact so they would not leave with out being dinged and un-warranted fees. More expensive hand set costs, where was the customer to go?

NEXTEL’s nitch was the “direct connect” feature which was cheap to operate for both the provider and user compared to cell technology, which is why they catered to the business industry. Also Sprint had no direct connect or push to talk, where as the other providers did. But things changed and the cell market did too. Direct connect was now passé. You can now talk to just about one for any length of time on any network without burning off your minutes. Case in point now with AT&T Wireless formally Cingular Wireless, Verizon, T-Mobile and of course the last to jump in Sprint to offer unlimited talk for a fixed monthly price.

By this time the customers were fed up with the awful customer service, unreliable service and they were running and not walking for better everything. By the time Sprint took action it was water under the bridge. Even though Forsee is gone the same principals exist today. It’s business as usual. Screw the customer for everything they are worth at any cost. Vote with your feet people, run to a better provider!!

CBR Dad - you did not mention that the latest - that Sprint appears to have maintained its allegedly eroding customer base by signing up the absolute least creditworty customers - the dregs of the consumer world - which of course has led to hundreds of millions of write-offs in the form of uncollectable accounts receiveable.

It always perplexes me as to why ostensibly smart companies ignore Finance 101 - meaning that there is always a relationship between risk and return, and decide that the way to enhance business is to do business with credit thieves. The mortgage industry did the same thing - and while in a capitalism system - companies are free to be stupid - one would hope that the losses fall solely on shareholders and bondholders and lenders of these astute enterprises and not the public or the fisc.

Mitsubishi did this in the automobile business four or five years back - with their no pay for a year program. Scores of credit thieves drove the car for a year - hey - free transportation, and turned the keys in thereafter or assented to repossession. hmmm....seems like some would learn.

back about 12 years ago the horizon of overland park, kansas was changed by a 110 acre sprint headquarters building 2 miles from my house. i'd always thought that they stayed there in that complex, it took forever to build. but when i moved here i drove past the one on sunrise valley and realised that it was now here. this sounds very odd to me that they would move back, when they couldn't aford their other complex. sprint must be doing really bad. this complex was a major boost for the county of leawood, until they packed up shop and ran to virginia. i say fuck em

There wasn't any of this kind of trouble when we had good old C and P Telephone running things.