SPRINT PLANS TO SPEND $10 BILLION OVER NEXT TWO YEARS TO UPGRADE TO LTE

Wonder just how much it costs to phase out iDEN and WiMAX networks and put all your eggs in one, CDMA / LTE-flavored basket? Well, Joe Euteneuer, Sprint's CFO, just offered up a frank answer here at its "Strategy Update" event: $10 billion over the next two years. That's a heckuva lot more than the $4 billion to $5 billion Wall Street was expecting, but Euteneuer assured all the suited-up financial analysts in the room that the company should save $10 billion to $11 billion through 2017 (a figure widely reported before today), with $4 billion of that resulting from not having to maintain the iDEN network anymore.

Sprint plans to have 125 million subscribers covered in LTE by the end of 2012 with the rest done by the end of 2013. The first LTE phones and tablets will begin rolling out on the network sometime around June 2012.