The Wall Street Journal reports that Sprint is in talks to lease capacity on its network to new entrants Clearwire and LightSquared, which could lead to a deal which would turn the companies’ current business models on their heads – Clearwire and LightSquared are wholesale operators, whereas Sprint is primarily customer-facing. According to the paper, the deal would enable the new entrants to expand their service coverage more rapidly than through building networks of their own, while providing long-troubled US number three Sprint with a new revenue stream. The move is also intended to better position Sprint to compete with the combined AT&T/T-Mobile USA, and to ensure this operator has access to the spectrum needed to support new and existing mobile services.

Sprint is in the process of significantly upgrading its network, and has previously touted the flexibility of its new infrastructure to support technologies including WiMAX and LTE – the 4G technologies of choice for Clearwire and LightSquared respectively. It was again suggested that the big loser from any alliance would be Nokia Siemens Networks, which won the US$7 billion contract to install LightSquared’s network – as previously reported, this could benefit Alcatel-Lucent, Ericsson and Samsung, which are Sprint’s existing infrastructure partners. According to the Wall Street Journal, payments from LightSquared would be in the form of cash and spectrum, including frequencies which could be used by Sprint to improve its coverage in rural areas –therefore reducing the need for subscribers to roam onto the networks of Verizon Wireless or other rivals.