Sprint has been doing everything in its power to earn customers lately, but this may be the thing that reels in the biggest fish: according to CNET, The Now Network will be announcing a 4-5 billion dollar LTE deal with LightSquared during its upcoming earnings call on July 28th. Sprint launched its WiMax network early-on with Clearwire, which proved to be a hole-in-one for the duo, but Clearwire has since slowed the growth of WiMax due to financial reasons.

Considering VZW's new LTE network has set the standard for 4G across the country, this is the obvious evolution for Sprint to take - and it's reported that it will drop the aforementioned $4-5 billion over the next three to five years on upgrading the network to LTE. The changeover is projected to save The Now Network an estimated $10-11 billion over a seven year period due to more efficient equipment.

LightSquared is an independent 4G LTE provider that's had a bit of trouble getting off the ground due to conflictions with GPS systems. This deal will take care of those issues, as it will allow LightSquared to work on the backbone of Sprint's network. The work is set to begin in the second half of the year (read: immediately), with testing beginning as early as next year.

[CNET]