Sprint Ready to Leapfrog to Multi-Mode

Sprint Corp. (NYSE: S) has revealed some more technical details of its plan to support 3G and "4G" wireless services on a single platform and announced that vendors Alcatel-Lucent (NYSE: ALU), Ericsson AB (Nasdaq: ERIC), and Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd. (Korea: SEC) will start to deliver the hardware and software to implement the "Network Vision" project in 2011, saving the operator billions of dollars over time.

The heart of the plan is a multi-mode base station that will support CDMA, iDEN, and WiMax on a single platform. Sprint currently supports CDMA on 1900MHz, iDEN on 800MHz and -- through its partner Clearwire LLC (Nasdaq: CLWR) -- WiMax on 2.5GHz, all using separate equipment. Sprint had earlier referred to this plan as "Project Leapfrog" internally.

The plan is that the vendors supply hardware, software, and services that help the carrier consolidate these services, starting in 2011. The carrier expects that the project could take three to five years to complete.

Sprint says the project will be divided between Alcatel-Lucent, Ericsson, and Samsung on "a market-by-market basis." The markets for each company will include: