Sprint Corp is to buy Houston, Texas-based Paranet Inc, a distributed computing professional services specialist, for $435m in cash. Sprint, which is the third largest long distance carrier in the US, turned over $14bn last year and this latest move is an attempt to grab market share in the local area sector. Sprint already has a firm foothold in wide area networking with its managed network services. Increasingly, large companies are choosing to outsource the management of their complex local computer networks, and Sprint’s biggest rivals, MCI Communications Corp and AT&T Corp branched off into computer systems integration business a few years ago. Paranet is expected to turn over $120m this year, and has already filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission in February for a public listing. The company will operate as a separate business unit of Sprint, and will change its name to Sprint Paranet.
