Sprint announced Monday at CTIA Wireless 2005 that it is beefing up its wireless services for business users.

The carrier is launching its Extended Workplace remote access service at the show. Sprint briefly talked about the service earlier this month. Extended Workplace offers business users a secure platform to access their corporate VPN via Sprint’s PCS Vision wireless data service, dial-up or wireless LAN.

The carrier teamed up with service provider Fiberlink, which also offers secure remote access services to business users, to develop a single, secure client that allows users to see all of their access options as they travel around the globe.

PCS Vision is available across the U.S., and Sprint has a network of 14,000 Wi-Fi hotspots.

Although the service does not include wired Ethernet locations, as competitors AT&T and MCI offer with their remote access services, there will be future releases of Extended Workplace that will likely include additional access options, says Barry Tishgart, senior director of product management at Sprint.

The service is available for $120 per month, per user for unlimited PCS Vision and Wi-Fi access. While the plan does include dial-up, users pay for that service based on how much they use. Users will pay $0.35 per hour for local dial-up, $2.95 per hour for toll-free dial-up and $1.40 per hour for domestic roaming off of Sprint’s network. 

Sprint is also expected to announce the first wireless data service-level agreement (SLA) at the show.

Last summer Sprint became the first wireless service provider to offer an SLA for its mobile voice services for business customers.

Sprint’s wireless data SLA guarantees that the network will be available 99.5% of the time, that wireless data blocks will be less than 2% and that wireless data drops will be less than 1%.

If the carrier misses these metrics users are entitled to a 10% credit of their wireless data monthly recurring charge. In other words, if a company pays $1,000 per month for all of its wireless data services it will receive a $100 credit.

The credits are not proactive. Users must log in to a secure Sprint Web portal to view the carrier’s monthly network performance statistics. If Sprint did not meet its SLA the user then has to request a credit.