DALLAS-PrimeCo Personal Communications L.P. said Lucent Technologies Inc. now is its exclusive network infrastructure supplier after replacement of eight switches and more than 1,200 base stations during the past six months.
PrimeCo said it replaced the mobile switching centers and base stations in Wisconsin; Austin/San Antonio and Dallas/Fort Worth, Texas; and in Chicago and central Illinois, without disrupting phone service. PrimeCo ripped out all of Motorola Inc.’s equipment, switching to Lucent’s after reportedly becoming dissatisfied with its Motorola system.
The personal communications services provider added 108,000 new customers during the third quarter in the midst of the network infrastructure conversion, bringing its total subscriber base to more than 700,000, said the company.
As the first major U.S. PCS provider to adopt a single-vendor strategy, PrimeCo said it expects the all-Lucent network to provide multiple consumer benefits, as well as benefits to the company. The strategy is expected to yield significant operational savings, increase network reliability and standardize the engineering, network monitoring and maintenance processes, PrimeCo said.
“Our overriding goal was to accomplish this monumental task without disrupting service to our customers, slowing our growth or negatively impacting our 1998 business plan,” stated PrimeCo President and Chief Executive Officer Lowell McAdam. “We succeeded. PrimeCo is perfectly poised for the launch of the fourth-quarter selling season.”
McAdam also said the move will shorten research and development cycles for new products and services by eliminating network interoperability issues. PrimeCo plans to focus its product-development efforts on consumer-friendly applications that enable its customers to use their PrimeCo phone to conduct interactive transactions, such as checking traffic reports and finding restaurants.
PrimeCo is owned by AirTouch Communications Inc. and Bell Atlantic Corp.
