Sprint Plans $5 Billion Network Upgrade, IDen Phase-out
Sprint Nextel will spend up to $5 billion to upgrade its network with a focus on improving speed and reducing operating costs, Steve Elfman, president of network operations and wholesale, said on a company conference call Monday. Phasing out the iDEN network and repurposing part of the 800 MHz spectrum for CDMA-based service are part of the plan.
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Alcatel-Lucent, Ericsson and Samsung Electronics will handle the overhaul of Sprint’s network over the next three to five years, a move which the company estimates will save it $10 billion to $11 billion over the next seven years, Elfman said. The Network Vision project seeks to improve network coverage and deploy multimode equipment that works in all three bands that Sprint currently uses: 800 MHz, 1.9 GHz and 2.5 GHz. Sprint expects to debut the next-generation of Push-to-Talk (PTT) services in 2011 on the CDMA network, offering customers sub-second call setup time along with data capabilities. As the shift to more broadband-centric PTT applications on the CDMA network occurs, it’s expected that iDEN cell sites will be phased out starting 2013, Elman said.
Meanwhile, deployment of new multi-mode base stations would give Sprint greater technology flexibility and could eventually allow the carrier to deploy LTE, Elfman said. If the company chooses to deploy LTE, it can do so with low cost, he said. Still, Clearwire remains Sprint’s 4G strategy, he said. Sprint and the three equipment vendors expect to finalize the implementation schedule and begin the first stages of deployment in 2011. While questions remain over how well the company can execute on its plan, Sprint is using technology already deployed by other carriers, so there are fewer risks of problems, said analyst Jonathan Chaplin of Credit Suisse.