Sprint (S) Shows Its Weaknesses (GOOG)(CMCSA)(INTC)

Sprint (S) may be building the nation's biggest broadband wireless network, but its core business is still in trouble. Is the company becoming so weak that its partner ship with Intel (INTC),  Comcast (CMCSA), and Google (GOOG) will get into trouble?

Revenue for the quarter were $9.3 billion, an 8% decline compared to $10.1 billion reported in the first quarter of 2007. Reported diluted loss per share was 18 cents compared to a 7 cent loss in the year-ago period.

Customers continue to walk away from the company. For the quarter, total wireless subscribers declined by 1.09 million due to losses of 1.07 million post-paid subscribers and 543,000 traditional prepaid users.Sprint had 52.8 million total subscribers at the end of the period, compared to 53.6 million at the end of the first quarter of 2007.

The company's subscriber churn rate and revenue-per-customer both fell.

Wall St. has to ask whether there will be anything left of the company when it is time to start creating the new WiMax infrastructure.

Douglas A. McIntyre