S

Sprint Corporation

A major American wireless carrier that provided mobile phone service to millions of customers before merging with T-Mobile in 2020. Its roots reach back to 1899, when Cleyson Brown founded the Brown Telephone Company in Abilene, Kansas, to offer rural phone service as an alternative to Bell. The "Sprint" name came from the Southern Pacific Railroad, whose private microwave network was opened to the public for long-distance calls — the acronym is said to stand for "Southern Pacific Railroad Internal Network Telecommunications."