Two Sprint network executives will leave the company

Sprint’s No. 2 executive, a longtime colleague of chief executive Dan Hesse, is leaving the Overland Park-based wireless company, as is its chief network officer.

Steven L. Elfman, president of network, technology and operations, will leave Sprint later this year, spokeswoman Melinda Tiemeyer confirmed Friday. She declined to provide specifics about the timing of his departure, though Elfman’s employment contract extends into early January 2015.

Elfman was Sprint’s second-highest-paid executive last year, behind Hesse, earning $9 million in a mix of salary, stock and other compensation. The two men had worked together previously at AT&T Wireless and a smaller company called Terabeam in Redmond, Wash.

Tiemeyer also said Bob Azzi, chief network officer, “reached a mutual understanding” with the company and would be leaving.

John Saw, who had been chief technology officer of Clearwire, is being named Sprint’s chief network officer. Sprint acquired Clearwire last year as part of its acquisition by Tokyo-based SoftBank.

Azzi has been with Sprint for 26 years and is working “to ensure a smooth transition of responsibility,” Tiemeyer said.

News about the company’s senior network officials comes as the No. 3 wireless carrier strives to catch up with much larger rivals Verizon and AT&T in providing advanced mobile Internet speeds to consumers. No. 4 T-Mobile US also has expanded its speedy LTE technology network to potential customers more quickly than Sprint.

Sprint executives have said their network upgrade will reach a turning point midway through this year and leapfrog their rivals’ offerings. Sprint already has launched a faster wireless broadband connection called Sprint Spark and a high-quality voice service called HD Voice in some markets, including Kansas City.

Some saw the executives’ pending departures as evidence of SoftBank’s increasing imprint from its 80 percent ownership of Sprint.

SoftBank founder Masayoshi Son, who is also Sprint’s chairman, is set Tuesday to speak in Washington about the potential of mobile Internet service to drive innovation, education and the economy in America.

The Wall Street Journal, in a front page article Friday, included Azzi’s departure in a sweeping account of Son’s sometimes boisterous efforts to drive Sprint. It cited sources close to the situation who described meetings with Sprint officials in which the Japanese billionaire yelled and pounded his fist on a table, as well as handed out congratulations and hugs.

It marks a stark contrast to Sprint’s more restrained culture.

The Star previously reported on Son’s sometimes blunt descriptions of Sprint’s culture and his hopes of changing it — which, he wrote in a Japanese publication in January, is “why I sometimes yell at Sprint executives.”

Among the highlights of the Journal’s article:

• Son has established a “shadow headquarters” in San Carlos, Calif. He spends about half his time there and is bringing in about 1,000 SoftBank employees from Japan to help develop new services and tweak wireless technologies. At the same time, Sprint executives are flying in each month to California for several days of meetings.

• Son has been unhappy at the slow pace of approvals by local government officials of proposed cell tower installations. Sprint officials reminded the Japanese executives that replacing the company’s cellular network is especially hard because of the size of the U.S. compared with Japan, which is about as big as Montana.

• Sprint now tracks sales data in real time, including hourly figures on specific retail stores and employees.

• Son has compared Sprint to the daimyo, “feudal lords of pre-modern Japan who wielded absolute power in their territories but little influence elsewhere,” the Journal reported. According to one SoftBank executive, Son said, “Sprint is a daimyo in Kansas. That’s not enough.”

Sprint declined to comment about the specific topics in the Journal article.

Industry consultant Berge Ayvazian at Heavyreading.com said SoftBank’s emerging operations in San Carlos are near Sprint’s data center in Burlingame in Silicon Valley. He expects SoftBank’s offices increasingly to become the center of gravity.

Son and other Japanese officials don’t relish frequent trips to Sprint’s Overland Park headquarters, Ayvazian said.

Nor can Hesse frequently skip Son’s appearances in San Carlos, he said, adding that Hesse has shown a willingness to move with his job throughout his career.

A shift west would accelerate if Sprint, led by Son, was successful in acquiring T-Mobile.

“They’re still fixated on merging Sprint and T-Mobile US, and they’re looking to create a location at which those two entities can converge,” Ayvazian said.

It is less clear that Elfman’s plans to depart are related to SoftBank. Ayvazian said the Sprint executive had talked about retiring for about two years.

Elfman, 58, according to Sprint’s annual report filed last month, may have laid the groundwork for an exit last September when he got Sprint to update his employment contract. The changes allowed Elfman to move to the Seattle area and work in Clearwire offices there. It also ensured that he would report directly to Sprint’s chief executive.

Previously, Elfman worked under an automatically renewing contract that did not specify an end date and allowed the chief executive to designate whom he would report to.

This story was originally published March 7, 2014 at 7:01 PM with the headline "Two Sprint network executives will leave the company."