Summary
1. Even if one assumes “Ericsson will [not] make money in the initial years of the deal,” it still gets the supplier in the door of a major US wireless carrier. 2. Although Sprint Nextel would continue to be responsible for capital investments,” there is going to be a hesitancy not to alienate the company that is in effect in charge of operations for the network. 3. With expectations that Sprint will eventually move to LTE, Ericsson would be in an excellent position to get a huge chunk of sales.
Analysis
Desperate times call for desperate measures. In the past, it would have been unthinkable for any US service provider to hand over the running of the network to a third party. Operations has always been sacrosanct. However, Sprint is a dire situation with limited options. An opportunity to “slash the wireless carrier's network costs by about 20%” is hard to pass up. However, dependence on an outside entity puts a carrier totally at the mercy of the supplier.
It should be noted that Sprint’s IP fiber optic network does not seem to be included. The use of the optical network would almost certainly cause close scrutiny by the government if it were to be used for transmitting sensitive data.
