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On April 21, 2005, in a press release entitled "Sprint Extends Wi-Fi Leadership and Broadband Footprint Globally," Sprint announced that it had "signed Wi-Fi high-speed wireless service roaming agreements with four broadband Internet service providers and a virtual network enabler which will increase the number of Wi-Fi hotspots available to customers to more than 19,000 including extensive international connectivity." This press release also said that these five agreements would increase the availability of Sprint Wi-Fi connectivity by "more than 10,000 new locations."

The press announcement went on to say that:

"Pronto Networks, a Wi-Fi OSS leader, signed a bilateral roaming agreement with Sprint that allows each company's customers to access the other's public Wi-Fi networks. Pronto has hundreds of locations in North America, including prominent hotels, business centers, shopping malls, RV parks, restaurants, cafes and city-wide hot zones. For more information, visit www.prontonetworks.com."

The same day, Pronto Networks issued an announcement of its own, in which it said:

"Wi-Fi OSS leader Pronto Networks today announced a bilateral roaming agreement with Sprint that will provide customers of each company with access to each other’s public Wi-Fi networks (see Sprint release below). Pronto is one of five companies Sprint signed roaming agreements with.

"The agreement enables Sprint Wi-Fi to extend its footprint by hundreds of locations in North America (including city-wide hot zones, hotels, business centers, shopping malls, RV parks, restaurants) and provides Pronto’s customers access to key US airports and other high-traffic public areas.

"To connect to the networks, existing customers will need a Wi-Fi-enabled laptop or PDA and a Sprint PCS Wi-Fi Access account or a subscription account offered by one of Pronto’s service providers.

"Pronto's Wi-Fi Operations Support System (OSS) software provides secure authentication, subscriber management, network monitoring, and customer care at all Pronto-enabled locations."

To get additional information and background about this agreement between Sprint and Pronto Networks, Broadband Wireless Access World spoke this afternoon with Nandu Desai, Director of Product Management at Pronto Networks.

You can listen to that interview with Nandu Desai, Director of Product Management at Pronto Networks, its entirety by clicking here.

To listen to a prior Broadband Wireless Access World audio interview with Lee Tsao, Worldwide Solutions Director, Pronto Networks, click here.