Sprint circles its wagons in Kansas

Sprint Nextel has decided to consolidate its two headquarters, eliminating a relic of the merger of Sprint and Nextel Communications in 2005.

After that deal closed, the new company set up its corporate headquarters in Reston, Virginia, which had been the home of Nextel, and established an operational base in Sprint’s home of Overland Park, Kansas. Now it will have just one main office, in Overland Park.

The move was widely anticipated as a new CEO, Dan Hesse, took over the troubled operator. Consolidating the networks and corporate cultures of Sprint and Nextel has proved harder than merging them financially, and it has weighed down a company that has enough problems already, according to industry analysts. Sprint is losing subscribers and struggling to distinguish itself as the number-three player in the U.S. behind AT&T Wireless and Verizon Wireless. It is close to a limited launch of its WiMax mobile broadband network but is unlikely to reach its WiMax coverage goal by the end of this year, an executive said Wednesday at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona.

Since Hesse took the helm in December, the company’s top financial, marketing and sales executives have left, and it has announced plans to lay off 4,000 employees.

Consolidating management in Overland Park will cut travel costs, bring executives closer to the company’s operations and make better use of Sprint’s real estate assets, according to a company statement. The move will require relocation of only a small number of executives, and Sprint will continue to have “a very significant employee presence in Reston,” the company said. Sprint has about 4,400 employees in the Washington, D.C., region and about 13,300 in the Kansas City, Missouri, area, where Overland Park is located.

Sprint traces its roots to the Brown Telephone Co., founded in Abilene, Kansas, in 1899, according to the company’s Web site.