New Sprint CEO’s letter to employees

Dear Sprinters,

This is day 1 for me, a new beginning.

I am leaving Brightstar, the company I started 17 years ago in Miami and grew into a multibillion-dollar leader in wireless distribution and services, to join Sprint, a company with over 100 years of rich history and one of the premier wireless operators in the world. I could not be more thrilled and excited. In fact, I spent this past weekend looking at properties in Kansas City and enrolling my children in a local school. We are ready to hit the ground running.

Before I get into details about the future, I want to personally thank Dan Hesse for his contributions to Sprint over the past 7 years. He guided this company through some difficult challenges and positioned it as a leader in sustainability and corporate responsibility. In addition, his focus on innovation and his determination to upgrade our network have left us with a strong foundation for the future.

As many of you likely know, I joined the Sprint board in January of this year. During my time on the board, I was exposed to Sprint's great history of success and innovation. This time also provided me with deep insight into some of the challenges and opportunities we have ahead of us – and some of them are significant.

The good news is we have already started working on them. The management team has been working closely with the board to outline the future strategy of the company. On Thursday, August 14, at 11 am Central, I will be holding a company-wide Townhall to share my thoughts and vision for making Sprint the wireless carrier of choice in the United States. Furthermore, and even in advance of the Townhall, I am eager to hear from all of you about how we can make Sprint better.

You have probably seen the many media reports speculating about Sprint’s future. As I have already said, consolidating makes sense in the long-term but, for now, we will focus on growing and repositioning Sprint. In the short-term, our success will come from our focus on becoming extremely cost efficient and competing aggressively in the marketplace.

Finally, I have had the good fortune to see a small company I started back in 1997 grow into a major enterprise with operations across the globe. One of the most important lessons I learned along the way, is that there are two types of people: Those who dream, but let the dream go and those who dream and do the work to achieve those dreams.

There has never been a better or more fascinating time to be in the wireless industry. If we innovate and work hard together, I have every confidence that we will make Sprint the carrier of choice in the US.

Marcelo

This story was originally published August 11, 2014 at 5:13 PM with the headline "New Sprint CEO’s letter to employees."