, Sprint has just announced that it has entered into a 15-year agreement with LightSquared to provide 4G LTE capabilities on its network. According to Sprint's press release, "LightSquared will make payments to Sprint of approximately $9 billion in cash for spectrum hosting and network services as well as LTE and satellite purchase credits which are currently estimated to be valued at approximately $4.5 billion".

With this deal going ahead, LightSquared expects nationwide 4G to cover 260 million people in the USA by 2014 - one year ahead of the FCC mandate of 2015.

“This spectrum hosting agreement with LightSquared allows Sprint to more efficiently use its Network Vision platform,” said Steve Elfman, president of Network Operations and Wholesale for Sprint. “In addition to improving our cash flow, it provides additional options and flexibility in how we meet our customers’ future capacity needs.”

The deal will help to eradicate any issues that LightSquared had with GPS system conflicts, as it will allow the company to use Sprint's network for its testing.

The move will no doubt attract more people to the network as 4G LTE services begin to roll out on Sprint's devices, and improving these speeds across the board should also make plans more competitive in the long run across all mobile networks.

Source: Sprint