OVERLAND PARK -(Dow Jones)- Sprint Corp. (FON) plans to invest about $3 billion in its wireless network over the next three years, awarding contracts to Lucent Technologies Inc. (LU), Motorola Inc. (MOT) and Nortel Networks (NT).
In a press release Tuesday, the phone company said it earmarked about $1 billion of the $3 billion to upgrade its network to "Evolution, Data Optimized," or EV-DO, technology which it says will increase mobile device data speeds by a factor of ten.
In a separate statement Tuesday, Lucent said its share of the total included a three-year contract renewal likely to exceed $1.5 billion.
Lucent will upgrade base stations that it previously supplied to Sprint, adding radio frequency carriers, where needed, so the stations can support EV-DO service.
The Murray Hill, N.J., telecommunications equipment company said it will also provide key elements of its IP Multimedia Subsystem product which will allow Sprint to introduce new voice over IP, or VoIP, and multimedia services over mobile wireline and converged networks."
Posted to the site on 7th December 2004
Posted to: www.cellular-news.com/story/11392.php