Sprint, LightSquared, Clearwire in Advanced Talks About Infrastructure Sharing

Sprint Nextel is in advanced talks to rent space on its wireless tower network to LightSquared and Clearwire, the Wall Street Journal reports. For LightSquared, the deal accelerates the pace of its national terrestrial network construction.

Sprint will be paid by Lightsquared partly in cash and partly in spectrum, which will allow Sprint to deploy a new 4G Long Term Evolution network without waiting for spectrum auctions or deactivation of its Nextel iDEN network.

Somewhat oddly, given that Sprint relies on Clearwire to build the 4G WiMAX network Sprint is using, the deal also will allow Clearwire to finish national network construction at lower cost, as well.

Sprint in Talks to Share Network - MarketWatch