American telecom service provider Sprint is planning around $8 billion Capex (capital spending) in 2014.
In 2013, Sprint’s Capex was $7,451 million against $5,370 million in 2012.
Out of this, Sprint’s wireless Capex was $3,243 in 2013 as compared with $4,884 million in the previous year, said Sprint in its financial report.
The No. 3 U.S. mobile provider has invested $155 million towards Capex in Wireline in 2013 against $242 million in 2012, said Sprint.
As part of the network coverage, Sprint has expanded its 4G services. Currently, more than 200 million people are covered by 4G LTE. The company continues to expect that by the middle of this year LTE coverage will reach 250 million people and the voice/3G network modernization deployment will be complete.
In addition, Sprint Spark is now available in 14 of the largest U.S. cities including today’s launches in Philadelphia and Baltimore.
Sprint Spark is capable of delivering 50-60 Megabits per second peak speeds today with potential speeds three times as fast by late 2015. Sprint Spark leverages the company’s 800MHz, 1.9GHz and 2.5GHz spectrum together with devices offering tri-band capability and high-definition voice.
Sprint on Tuesday said it plans to deploy Sprint Spark in about 100 of America’s largest cities during the next three years. By the end of this year, 100 million Americans are expected to have Sprint Spark coverage.
Sprint currently has nearly 33,000 Network Vision sites on air, an increase of more than 24,000 sites over the last 12 months.
Sprint, which is 80 percent owned by Japan’s SoftBank Corp., said its Q4 revenue rose to $9.14 billion from $9.01 billion. Full year revenue was $35.5 billion.
Sprint said its loss narrowed to $1.04 billion, or 26 cents per share, in the fourth quarter, from $1.32 billion, or 44 cents per share, in the year-ago quarter. Operating loss for the quarter was $576 million as compared to an operating loss of $738 million in the fourth quarter of 2012.