Sprint signs 7-year “Network Advantage” agreement with Ericsson

Sprint (NYSE: S) announced that it has signed a 7-year long agreement titled “Network Advantage” with Ericsson. Valued between $4.5 billion and $5 billion, the deal will deliver “operational efficiencies” to Sprint, allowing the carrier to “focus on delivering a superior customer experience, innovative services and popular new devices.”

Key elements of Network Advantage are: (from the press release)

• Sprint retains full ownership and control of its network assets, and solely owns network strategy and investment decisions.
• Sprint retains full control of the customer experience, customer technical support and services review.
• Sprint retains technology and vendor selections.
• Ericsson assumes responsibility for the day-to-day services, provisioning and maintenance for the Sprint-owned CDMA, iDEN and wireline networks.
• Ericsson will optimize Sprint’s multi-vendor inventory of assets such as spare parts and transmission equipment, and provide processes and tools for managing the national network platforms and operational support systems.
• About 6,000 Sprint employees will become part of Ericsson Services Inc. sometime in Q3 2009. No force reductions are currently contemplated as a result of this agreement.

In a nutshell, Sprint is outsourcing portion of its network management business to Ericsson, so it could focus on getting more subscribers. Hopefully, that will work for them…