Future

MarketWatch reports that Moody's Investors Service on Friday downgraded its corporate family rating on Sprint Nextel Corp. (NYSE:S) to Ba2 from Ba1, saying the wireless-services provider's ability to stem the deterioration of its earnings is taking longer than it had originally anticipated.

Sprint declined to comment Friday on the rating action.

The agency said the company's leverage, therefore, is likely to deteriorate before stabilizing at much weaker levels than previously expected. The outlook for Sprint Nextel's ratings is negative. Moody's said earnings pressure is likely to persist until the loss of post-paid subscribers decreases more significantly.

Those investment minds at the Motley Fool don’t seem to have any answers for Sprint Nextel’s problems.

Still, their reaction to the company’s recent quarterly report provides something of a what’s-wrong round up.

The theme seems to be that Sprint is caught in an untenable middle position.

The San Francisco Chronicle reports that for many of the 1,000-plus developers at the Sprint Open Developers Conference on Tuesday, there was but one word on their lips: Android.

While talk in the past has focused on Windows Mobile or Palm, the biggest topic of conversation at the ninth annual conference in Santa Clara was Google's 1-year-old smart phone operating system, which has become the darling of the mobile development world.

The Deutsche Telekom rumors just don’t stop.

Deutsche Telekom, the German parent of T-Mobile recently rumored (and then not rumored) to be looking at acquiring Sprint, is in talks with Clearwire and MetroPCS to gain access to their spectrum, Bloomberg reports.

Deutsche is also in talks with Sprint, according to the article.

On Monday, FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski laid out some ideas in the way of network neutrality, including discussing how the principles might apply to wireless networks.

First, an explanation of net neutrality: The FCC has a broad policy statement with four principles about network usage. They’re not laws – just guidelines.

According to PC World, they are:

We already know that yesterday, Palm provided its fiscal first-quarter earnings report – a loss, but buoyed by what were likely fairly solid Pre sales.

In the conference call after earnings data were released, CFO Doug Jeffries said the “vast majority” of smartphone activity in the quarter was related to the Pre, which launched June 6.

During the call, Palm CEO Jon Rubinstein mentioned a couple of interesting things: He said the company had secured deals with new carrier partners to sell Palm’s webOS products.

After making a hefty 10-percent price jump yesterday on the news of a potential buyout bid, it looks like traders have tempered their Sprint-buying frenzy today.

Sprint shares are trading about 1 percent lower at midday.

More rumors surfaced today, this time speculating that Deutsche Telekom is not going to make a bid for Sprint any time soon.

Yesterday, Sprint rolled out its service that provides unlimited calling to any cell phone in the U.S.

The plan runs at least $69.99 and includes unlimited data, messaging, GPS and at least 450 minutes for calls to landlines (family plans are obviously more minute-heavy).

Will the unlimited mobile-to-mobile -- not just intra-carrier like most other wireless providers -- become a new benchmark in wireless coverage?

It’s no secret shares of Sprint Nextel Corp. have fallen quite a bit in the last couple of years -- stock in the company has been worth as much as $19.01 in the past two years (the $19 mark happened in early October 2007).

Since mid-June, the company hasn’t closed above $5 a share. But is Sprint stock ready to recover, at least slightly, or will it fall further? Fortune Magazine talked with a couple of analysts to get their takes.

So is Sprint about to outsource its network operations – and shift thousands of employees – to Ericsson or not?

Mike Dano of Fierce Wireless posed exactly that question to Ericsson's President and CEO Carl-Henric Svanberg last week.

The CEO of the telecom industry giant discussed a blockbuster deal with Verizon Wireless, an emerging relationship with AT&T and the talk of “advanced negotiations” with Sprint.

The big carriers are hearing footsteps from smaller rivals who are closing in fast.

Fierce Wireless has a new report indicating that Boost Mobile, Leap Wireless, MetroPCS and Virgin Mobile USA are pressuring larger carriers such as Sprint Nextel and Verizon Wireless to find innovative and aggressive ways to remain atop the industry.

Sprint leaders offered another view today of how the company fared at the wireless industry's major trade show last week.

Fierce Wireless, as highlighted here on the Sprint Connection, said Verizon Wireless was rising and Sprint was falling following last week's CTIA event.

James Fisher, a Sprint spokesman, said that assessment failed to note several key developments in Sprint's favor at the CTIA show. Plus, with the soon-to-arrive Palm Pre, some of the major momentum-building developments for Sprint were not fully ready for the trade show.

Here is Fisher's take on Sprint, CTIA and yesterday's Sprint Connection post:

Times are tough, to be sure, but T-Mobile CEO Robert Dotson is optimistic about the future – and about the potential for his industry to help pull the economy out of the ditch.

“The most vibrant industry that may exist in the economy today is that of the communications industry, specifically the wireless communications industry,” Dotson said in an interview with CTIA-The Wireless Association.

Keep your eye on the subscribers.

Will Sprint Nextel drop below the 50 million mark? Will Sprint improve customer loyalty, a trend measured with a statistic called churn?

It won’t be a big surprise if Sprint Nextel posts a substantial loss and a quarterly drop in sales when it issues its fourth-quarter financial report in the semi-wee hours of Thursday morning.

Those things tend to happen when you are losing droves of customers, which Sprint was through at least the first three quarters of 2008. More than a few Wall Street analysts are anticipating that Sprint lost at least another million in the final three months of the year.

By JASON GERTZEN and DAVID HAYES
The Kansas City Star

Customers lost? Three million.

Debt? $23 billion.

Public perception? Not what it should be.

By now, there’s little debate. Sprint Nextel Corp., the Kansas City area’s largest employer and the country’s No. 3 wireless company, is lagging far behind its two largest competitors. Some analysts suggest the company is on the ropes.

But CEO Dan Hesse has his own message, and it’s one he’s been hammering on in TV commercials, on the company’s Overland Park campus and in the corporate offices of his best customers: Sprint’s not going out of business.

“Do AT&T and Verizon have an advantage because they are so huge?” Hesse asked in an interview last week with The Kansas City Star. “The answer is yes, but quite frankly, I think a lot of Americans like the underdog.”