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Prior to this year, Sprint has been in bad shape.  It lacked the numbers of AT&T and Verizon Wireless, had a low stock price, and didn’t seem to have much going for that.  That’s changed a bit with the announcement and release of the Palm Pre, with stocks doubling since January and more people paying attention to the company.  A single phone cannot turn and entire carrier around, however, and Sprint still needed to find a way to cut cost.  Enter Ericsson.

Sprint has reached a deal with Ericsson, the Swedish handset manufacturer, to run its network.  What that means is that Ericsson will handle the everyday tasks on the network such as cell tower maintenance.  Sprint will still own the network, but will transfer 6,000 employees to a separate office run by Ericsson that will handle those tasks. 

The idea is that Ericsson, which does this service for a number of carriers in Europe, will be able to handle the network day-to-day more cheaply than Sprint is able to currently.  While the network will be run by Ericsson, Steven L. Elfman, president of network operations and wholesale at Sprint believes that it will be able to focus more on on the carriers “quality of the coverage, attention to new products and services that differentiate us from the competition,” while Ericsson handles the network.

The move will free up $100 million annually, which is good news for Sprint.  Given Ericsson’s previous involvement in these sorts of deals, it’s doubtful that the network will be anything less than the same.  Some of the money that is now freed up could go towards expanding the network, as that seems to be where Sprint is lacking.  Another portion of the money will be possibly be going to cell phone development, which seems logical.  While its doubtful anything Sprint does right now will make it equal to AT&T and Verizon, maybe it could at least strive to be better than T-Mobile.

Read [NY Times]