Sprint CFO: No Rationing on Capex as Merger Looms

Sprint's recently hired CFO said that the operator is not rationing capital expenditures ahead of the anticipated completion of its $26.5 billion "transformative" merger with T-Mobile in the first half of 2019.

"Are you rationing spending right now?" Andrew Davies was asked at the Bank of America Merrill Lynch Leveraged Finance Conference on Wednesday morning in Boca Raton, Fla. "No." he laughed. "That's a firm no."

Davies gave examples of how the capex spending will benefit the merged company. As well as implementing 2.5GHz at around 70% of Sprint cell sites, the company has ramped up its small cell deployment. Davies says the totals have gone from 2,000 last year, to "more than 20,000" this year.

Sprint has capital expenditure expectations in the $5 billion to $6 billion range for 2018. (See 5G in the USA: Fall Edition.)

Sprint Corp. (NYSE: S) and T-Mobile US Inc. intend to combine their 600MHz and 2.5GHz frequencies with millimeter wave 28GHz frequencies to deliver a nationwide mobile 5G network, with promised average download speeds of 444 Mbit/s. (See T-Mobile, Sprint Say 5G-Focused Merger Will Lead to 'Cord Cutting' and Getting Real About Mobile 5G Speeds.)

— Dan Jones, Mobile Editor, Light Reading

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