Stephen Bye, Sprint's (NYSE: S) former chief technology officer, will become CTO of Tier 2 carrier C Spire on Nov. 1. Bye left Sprint in July amid the company's network densification efforts.

Bye

C Spire President and CEO Hu Meena said in a statement that he has known Bye for several years and he will make the company's management team stronger. Meena also said that Bye will be a great "cultural fit" for the Tier 2 operator.



Bye joined Sprint in 2011 as the company's VP of technology development, after heading up Cox Communications' wireless efforts. Cox later gave up on its wireless network buildout and sold its spectrum. He quickly rose through the ranks of Sprint to become the company's CTO in charge of the carrier's overall network strategy.



Bye oversaw several network overhauls at Sprint. In 2011, the company announced its "Network Vision" program to launch LTE and improve its CDMA network. And earlier this year the company announced its new, massive network densification strategy, called the "Sprint Next Generation Network," which, according to analysts at Macquarie Capital, will be heavily focused on small cells and using three-carrier carrier aggregation technology in the 2.5 GHz band.



C Spire, a regional carrier, offers LTE service in its market using gear from Alcatel-Lucent. The company also inked a roaming deal with Sprint in 2013 to enable LTE roaming across multiple spectrum bands. Interestingly, C Spire also has been building out a 1-Gig fiber to the home service in four Mississippi cities, including Clinton, Ridgeland, Starkville and Quitman, and will expand in three new cities by the end of the year.

For more:

- see this press release

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