The appointment is part of a company reorganization designed to cut costs.
As Sprint works to come back after losing its spot as the No. 3 wireless carrier to T-Mobile US over the summer, it is stationing a new regional president two miles down the road from its Bellevue-based rival.
Sprint, reorganizing internally to reduce redundancy across the business, cut costs and add new customers, named Annette Jacobs as president of the Pacific Northwest region to base in the company’s Bellevue office.
Citing an internal memo, The Kansas City Star reported Friday that Sprint CEO Marcelo Claure wrote one of Jacobs’ most important assignments will be to “Beat T-Mobile in its own backyard!”
Overland Park, Kan.-based Sprint, the country’s fourth-largest wireless carrier behind T-Mobile, AT&T and Verizon Wireless, is focusing on customer retention and reducing its overall cost structure after 10 years of losing money. It has a plan to identify $2 billion to $2.5 billion in cost reductions over the next six months, Sprint spokeswoman Adrienne Norton said. That will include an undisclosed number of job cuts, she said.
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Sprint currently operates centrally out of Overland Park, targeting four types of customers — postpaid, prepaid, enterprise and small/midsize. That has created a lot of redundancy across the business, Norton said..
“By moving to a regional model, it will allow local leaders to manage all aspects of the business and win locally,” she said in an email.
The move organizes Sprint into four geographic areas — West, Central, Northeast and South — with 19 targeted markets within those areas, including the Pacific Northwest, San Francisco, Phoenix, Chicago, Atlanta and Washington, D.C.
Jacobs is the first regional president announced for the 19 target markets. The restructuring, which also includes four area-presidents overseeing the regional presidents, should be complete by the spring.
Jacobs previously was the Northwest managing director of Newport Board Group and president of the West at Cricket, a wireless service provider acquired by AT&T. She also has held leadership positions at Qwest, Verizon Wireless and GTE Wireless
In her new job, she will cover Washington and Oregon with an emphasis and priority on the Seattle-area market, according to a release.