New telephone company Embarq Corp. is facing an age-old problem: How to expand market share when evolving technology challenges your business model.

Embarq is a spinoff of Sprint Nextel Corp., launched on Thursday as Sprint shed its traditional land-line phone business to concentrate on wireless service.

For Embarq's local land-line users, little will change, save for the new logo on their monthly statements. But Embarq's executives hope to usher in a new growth period at the utility -- and they say Las Vegas is essential to that expansion.

"Las Vegas is our single-most important market in the country. It's our largest market in terms of customers and revenue," said Dan Hesse, chairman and chief executive officer of Embarq and a former president and chief executive officer of AT&T Wireless Services. "It's a great test bed for us."

Before you discount the idea of a land line-based phone company snaring new market share in the age of cell phones and voice-over-Internet protocol, understand that Embarq's executives intend to transform the business into more than a conventional wire-line operation.

On June 5, Embarq will launch a voice-mail program that will give customers a single in-box for both cell-phone and land-line calls. Consumers will be able to check messages online, scrolling directly to the most important voice mails in their queue. Embarq is also testing a cell phone that uses mobile-phone networks outside and switches to Wi-Fi in the office. Users will avoid gobbling up cell-phone minutes while at work, and can leave the office while on conference calls without dropping the conversation.

Embarq also sells Internet service via a digital-subscriber-line division, and the company has an ongoing Wi-Fi trial with emergency first-responders in Henderson.

"Parts of our business are declining, but our goal is to more than make up for those declines by growing in other sectors and integrating new technologies in more useful ways," Hesse said.

Yet, Embarq isn't giving up on land lines.

Hesse sees a need for wire lines that can carry an increasing volume of business data. Wireless providers will also need to continue to lease wire lines from Embarq to help transmit their customers' calls. Also, he predicted, the "vast majority" of consumers and businesses will continue to have both wireless and land-line phones for the foreseeable future.

Roger Entner, a telecommunications analyst with Massachusetts technology consultant Ovum, said the wire-line industry remains profitable.

"Embarq financed the whole growth strategy of the Sprint we know today. It paid for (entry into) wireless and Internet," Entner said. "Embarq today, even though it is losing lines, is still a cash cow. The way the business is structured, customers pay $30 to $40 a month for service, and it costs the company significantly less to provide that service."

In Southern Nevada, Embarq's land-line business is especially healthy.

The Las Vegas market adds about 70,000 new residents a year, and that has buffered Embarq from the slides it's experiencing in land-line customers nationwide. Some media reports have pegged those losses at 5 percent a year. In Las Vegas, however, Embarq isn't experiencing significant line loss, Hesse said.

"Our line numbers look good in Las Vegas," he said.

Hesse added that Embarq also benefits from Southern Nevada's fresh infrastructure.

"Las Vegas is a very progressive market and a very competitive market, so it's a market we really need to be on top of," said Hesse, who's visited Las Vegas half a dozen times since he joined Embarq in June. "Las Vegas is growing out all the time with new neighborhoods, so we're always putting in our most advanced fiber and routers. We have a very modern network in Las Vegas by necessity."

Entner agreed that Embarq benefits from Southern Nevada's continuing development.

"You have the opportunity to make the whole city a telecommunications nirvana from end to end," Entner said.

Embarq's fresh start didn't have the warmest welcome on Wall Street.

On Thursday, in their first day of trading on the New York Stock Exchange, shares in Embarq opened at $45.40 but then fell to $43.75 in afternoon trading. The company's ticker symbol is EQ.

Hesse attributed the price drop to a changing investor base. Sprint Nextel stockholders aren't too keen on owning shares in a land-line business that they might consider obsolete, he said. Hesse added that Embarq's financial advisers have counseled company executives to expect downward pressure on the stock's price for a few months, at least until investors who prefer "a more stable, higher-dividend kind of stock" discover Embarq.