U.S. carrier Sprint has announced new 4G LTE roaming agreements with 12 rural and regional network carriers. Along with Sprint’s previously announced amended agreement with nTelos to extend their Strategic Network Alliance through 2022, the Rural Roaming Preferred Program - which was developed in conjunction with Competitive Carriers Association (CCA) - now extends coverage to 23 states, over 352,000 thousand square miles and a population of over 34 million people. 

Today’s announcement highlights agreements with 12 new carriers:

• SouthernLINC Wireless, covering 127,000 square miles and 18 million people in Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi and Florida
• nTelos, covering 66,000 square miles and 6.1 million people in Virginia, West Virginia, Maryland, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Ohio and Kentucky (previously announced)
• C Spire Wireless, covering over 61,700 square miles and approximately 5.5 million people in Mississippi, Alabama, Florida and Tennessee
• Nex-Tech Wireless, covering 35,000 square miles and 286,000 people in Kansas and Colorado
• Flat Wireless, covering over 29,000 square miles and 2.1 million people in Texas, New Mexico and Arizona
• SI Wireless dba MobileNation, covering 10,000 square miles and 830,000 people in Tennessee and Kentucky
• Inland Cellular, covering 9,000 square miles and 297,000 people in Idaho and Washington
• Illinois Valley Cellular, covering 5,500 square miles and 250,000 people in Illinois
• Carolina West Wireless, covering 3,100 square miles and 585,500 people in North Carolina
• James Valley Telecommunications, covering 4,000 square miles and 45,000 people in South Dakota
• VTel Wireless, covering 791 square miles and 60,450 people in Vermont
• Phoenix Wireless, covering 800 square miles and 17,000 people in Maine

As part of the program, Sprint is also working with CCA and rural carriers to pursue participation in the Sprint device and infrastructure ecosystem to help them reduce network build costs and gain earlier access to the latest devices at lower prices through increased scale.

These agreements complement the Small Market Alliance for Rural Transformation (SMART) initiative previously announced by Sprint and the NetAmerica Alliance, which provides participating rural communications service providers the capabilities they need to compete and thrive in delivering 4G LTE mobile broadband services to their communities. To date, Net America completed preliminary agreements with 14 companies and has engaged in discussions with approximately 40 additional companies in more than a dozen states.