US Unwired launches in eight PCS markets

(Telephony) US Unwired, a Sprint PCS network partner, has launched PCS service in eight markets in Mississippi and Alabama, bringing to 36 the total number of markets served by the company.

The eight new markets include six Mississippi cities—Columbus, Greenville, Hattiesburg, Laurel, McComb, and Tupelo—as well as Florence and Gadsden in Alabama.

US Unwired is authorized by Sprint to provide PCS services in 41 markets. Those still to be added are Decatur, Ala., Pine Bluff and Eldorado, Ark., Paris, Texas, and Natchez, Miss. This final phase of expansion should be complete by the middle of the year, according to Ed Moise, senior manager in charge of investor relations for the company.

Once it is, Moise indicated that the company will turn its attention to improving service.

“The expansion is definitely winding down for us,” he said. “We’re going to start implementing a fill-in strategy where we go back to the original markets that we launched and take a look at areas where our customers tell us that coverage needs to be improved. We’ll also look at the traffic on individual cell sites to determine where we need to beef up the network.”

With the addition of roughly 35,000 new PCS subscribers in the final quarter of 2000, the US Unwired subscriber base totals 126,000. The 36-market area that it now serves covers a population of approximately 6 million. Moise indicated that the company is shooting for a penetration rate of 15% over the long term.

If US Unwired hits its mark, the subscriber base in its current coverage area would jump to 900,000, something Moise believes is well within the company’s reach.

“We’ve been doubling our subscribers on a semi-annual basis,” he explained. “If you look at the analyst projections, our number actually looks conservative.”

In addition to providing Sprint PCS service across portions of Alabama, Arkansas, Mississippi, Tennessee, Florida, Texas, and Louisiana, US Unwired also provides cellular and paging services in southwest Louisiana.