"Over time, we'll have fewer and fewer customers on the iDEN network," he said. "That allows us to use some of that capacity on the network that is freed up and use it for CDMA. It's a gradual process. There will be an end date for all 2G, just like there was an end date for 1G."

OVERLAND PARK, Kan. (BUSINESS WIRE), October 27, 2010 - Sprint Nextel Corp. (NYSE: S) today reported that during the third quarter of 2010, the company achieved its best total company wireless subscriber net additions since 2006, adding 644,000 total wireless subscribers driven by positive net postpaid subscriber growth of 354,000 for the Sprint brand and the company’s best year-over-year improvement in postpaid churn in five years. Demand for smartphones like Samsung Epic 4GTM and HTC EVO™ 4G remained strong, and the company delivered postpaid churn of 1.93 percent – the best postpaid churn result Sprint has reported in the third quarter of any year.

Sprint announced third quarter consolidated net operating revenues of almost $8.2 billion, a net loss of $911 million and a diluted loss per share of 30 cents. The company generated $384 million of Free Cash Flow* in the quarter, and maintained a strong liquidity position with approximately $4.7 billion in cash and cash equivalents at the end of the quarter.

“Driven by record customer satisfaction, and the performance of iconic devices like the EVO and Epic, Sprint’s momentum continued this quarter,” said Dan Hesse, Sprint CEO. “The Sprint brand gained postpaid customers for the fourth consecutive quarter as, for the second consecutive quarter based on porting data, more customers switched to Sprint from our competitors than switched from Sprint to our competitors. In addition, our last two quarters have been all-time bests for postpaid churn. We also saw improvement sequentially in prepaid net adds and our lowest prepaid churn in almost five years.”