Sprint today said it has expanded the reach of its Rural Roaming Preferred Program to include 12 new carriers. The increased footprint covers 34 million POPs across 23 states and 352,000 square miles. The carriers involved include SouthernLINC Wireless, C Spire Wireless, nTelos, Nex-Tech Wireless, Flat Wireless, SI Wireless, Inland Cellular, Illinois Valley Cellular, Carolina West Wireless, James Valley Telecommunications, VTel Wireless, and Phoenix Wireless. According to Sprint, its customers will be able to roam onto the LTE 4G networks operated by these carriers and vice versa. Sprint further said it is working with these carriers to entice them to participate in Sprint's handset ecosystem. If they do, it could help them all reduce development costs and allow the smaller carriers to gain access to leading devices sooner.


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