Saturday, October 29, 2011

Sprint is Betting Much More on 4G than Originally Thought

Sprint Nextel Corporation’s (NYSE:S) 4G ambitions may end up costing the company twice as much as Sprint initially thought. That’s music to the ears of AT&T (NYSE:T) and Verizon (NYSE:VZ).

At Sprint’s Strategy Update on Friday, Joe Euteneuer, Sprint CFO said the company’s switch from its current iDEN and WiMaxs networks to CDMA/4G LTE will cost the company $10 billion. Analysts had placed a $4 to $5 billion number on the change and concern is starting to ripple that in addition to Sprint putting all of its eggs in one basket for the Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL) iPhone launch, it’s also doing so for 4G.

Euteneuer tried to calm analysts’ fears by saying the company should save $10 billion to $11 billion through 2017 from the change including a $4 billion savings from the absence of maintaining the iDEN network.

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