Overland Park ? The new head of Sprint Corp.’s local phone service division said Wednesday he looked forward to steering the soon-to-be-independent operation and shrugged off concerns that the local telephone sector is on the decline.

Daniel Hesse, named chief executive officer of the division Tuesday, acknowledged the stiff competition local phone companies are facing from cable operators, Internet telephone services and wireless companies such as Sprint itself.

But he said he felt there was room for additional revenue by being more aggressive and creative in selling high-speed Internet service and developing video entertainment offerings through broadband.

“If I didn’t think there were growth prospects, I wouldn’t come,” Hesse said at Sprint’s Overland Park headquarters. “I think there are great growth prospects in wireline for data.”

That optimism will come in handy next year when Sprint is expected to spin off the local division to its own company, part of its planned merger this year with Reston, Va.-based Nextel Communications Inc. The move instantly will create a Fortune 350 company and the fifth-largest local telephone company in the country with 7.6 million access lines in 18 states.

The division has 16,000 employees across the country, a number Hesse said would increase after the spin-off as the new company replaces administrative operations previously covered by the parent Sprint.

“I consider it an honor and a privilege to launch and create this new company,” said Hesse, who comes to Sprint with 27 years of experience in telecommunications, including three years as chief executive officer of AT&T Wireless.

Still, he’ll face a challenge because Sprint’s local division has shown little growth in recent years as more households drop landline service for wireless phones.

In 2004, the division posted revenues of $6.02 billion, down slightly from $6.13 billion the year before, and said it had lost 229,000 access lines.