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Mar. 25, 2008

On March 21, Sprint Nextel argued before a federal appeals court that an FCC rebanding order approved in November 2007 changed the terms of the commission’s original rebanding contract with the carrier.

Sprint argued that under its original agreement with the FCC, it would only have to give over the airwaves after rebanding was completed.

The wireless carrier also said that the ability to keep shuffling spectrum while working out the rebanding is very critical to maintaining its iDEN network.

Should Sprint lose the appeal, it will have to abandon its channels in the 800 MHz spectrum band by the original project’s due date, June 27th of this year, even though full rebanding may not be completed until at least four years from now.

If Sprint Nextel does win the appeal, the wireless carrier says it expects rebanding to cost between $2.7 billion and $3.4 billion.

Should it lose the appeal then the company estimates costs could exceed $3.4 billion by a material amount.

When Sprint acquired Nextel three years ago, it also inherited Nextel's rebanding agreement with the FCC and less than two years left to fix the interference issues between Nextel’s network and public safety radio communications.

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Source: Sprint Nextel.