Sprint has become the first wireless service provider to offer standard performance guarantees with its voice services.

Last week the carrier launched its network service-level agreements (SLA) that promise fewer than 2% of voice calls will be blocked or dropped, and 99.9% network availability per month. The SLAs apply only to business customer contracts.

"By guaranteeing products, [Sprint] is offering customers peace of mind," says Keith Waryas, research manager for wireless business network services at IDC. "At least Sprint is showing customers that it will put its skin in the game to provide best-effort services."

If Sprint does not meet any of these guarantees, users will be credited 10% of their regular monthly charges.

Waryas says the average business user spends about $60 per month. He says a company with 5,000 wireless users might spend about $300,000 per month on wireless services, meaning those credits would amount to serious money.

To see if Sprint lived up to its SLA, customers have to go to a password-protected Web site monthly to view wireless network performance metrics. If one or all metrics are missed, the customer then is required to request a credit. Although the guarantees are based on network-wide averages, Sprint is not offering proactive credits at this time.

Offering SLAs is "a smart move for Sprint," Waryas says. As Cingular Wireless and AT&T Wireless merge, Sprint will be the third-largest wireless provider.

"Sprint has been fairly aggressive in how it approaches customers, and it will continue to do so as the number of players drop," he says.

The guarantees are automatically available to all new Sprint customers and existing customers renewing contracts. Customers that have time remaining on their contracts must request to have the SLAs added to their contracts.