We’re all looking to save a little dough these days, and it looks like Sprint is no different. They’ve signed a seven-year deal with Ericsson estimated to be worth $4.5 billion, which will see Ericsson managing their mobile network. According to Sprint, they as of now do not plan any layoffs to deal with this new contract, so you’ll still have your job if you’re a Sprint employee. That said, some Spint employees will be working for the Ericsson folks starting in the third quarter. What makes this deal so interesting is that Steve Elfman, el presidente of Sprint’s network operations, claims that the point of this deal is for optimal rollout of new technologies. So we’re left wondering what this means for the Comcast 4G network that Sprint was apparently going to take part in.
While Alex was not a big fan of the idea of Comcast laying the groundwork for any sort of network, Sprint was set to partner with Comcast to have the first 4G data network in the US, if not the world. But it seems instead that, assuming Sprint does embrace 4G in the next seven years, it will be Ericsson’s technology that gets deployed on their network. This is bound to bring a smile and a sigh of relief to the Comcast haters of the world who’re Sprint customers.
