Telecom Lead America: Sprint Nextel, a mobile
service provider in the U.S, has arranged a credit facility of $1 billion to
buy network equipment from Ericsson for its high-speed wireless project.
For the credit facility, Sprint entered the credit
agreement with Deutsche Bank and a syndicate of other banks which expires in
March 2017.
“We’ll start with incomplete coverage and I’ll be
upfront about that. But in the areas where it carries out Network Vision,
Sprint will upgrade every cell site with both LTE and improved 3G
infrastructure, he said. Each market that’s launched will get 100 percent LTE
coverage within a matter of months,” said Bob Azzi, Sprint’s senior vice
president, Network.
Sprint will launch LTE in six major cities in the first
half of this year. Though it won’t have as much spectrum as Verizon in its
initial rollout, Sprint will match the bigger carrier’s subscriber experience
through its dense deployment and other efforts, such as steps to provide smooth
handoffs between 4G and 3G.
Sprint Nextel revenue up 5 percent to $8.7 billion in first
quarter of 2012
Recently, Sprint Nextel posted 5 percent increase in
revenue at $8.7 billion in the first quarter of 2012 against $8.3 billion in Q1
2011.
Sprint’s wireless service revenues were $7.2 billion
during the quarter, an increase of 7 percent year-over-year, driven by Sprint
platform postpaid ARPU growth of $4.03.
It reported a net loss of $863 million in the first
quarter of 2012 against a net loss of $439 million in the first quarter of
2011.
editor@telecomlead.com
