Sprint Nextel to Spend Up to $5 Billion to Upgrade Its Wireless Network

Sprint Nextel Corp. will spend as much as $5 billion to upgrade its 2G and 3G networks over the next three to five years, allowing Sprint to use a single set of base stations to support those networks, instead of multiple base stations.

Today, Sprint uses separate equipment to deploy services on 800MHz spectrum, 1.9GHz spectrum and, through its relationship with Clearwire, 2.5GHz spectrum. Under the terms of the new contracts, Alcatel-Lucent, Ericsson and Samsung will install new network equipment and software that brings together multiple spectrum bands, or airwaves, on a single, multimode base station.

As part of the plan, 800-MHz spectrum, very useful for in-building signal propagation, will be available for voice services, allowing better voice quality inside structures.

The plan does not appear to include the iDEN cell sites, which will be phased out, while iDEN users are migrated to the CDMA network. This phase out is expected to begin in 2013, Sprint says.

Sprint expects to save at least $10 billion to $11 billion over seven years because of decreases in energy costs, roaming expenses and the number of cell sites, among other items.

Sprint said it has negotiated contracts with Alcatel-Lucent SA, Ericsson AB and Samsung Electronics Co. for the project.

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