Report: Sprint planning to dump Lightsquared as early as next week

According to Bloomberg, Sprint is considering pulling the plug on its partnership with Lightsquared as early as next week. Philip Falcone's burgeoning enterprise was subject to a March 15th deadline to gain approval for a nationwide LTE network, but that was shot down by the FCC last month. The company's been treading water ever since and whilst it remains optimistic that a workaround can be found, it's already ousted former CEO Sanjiv Ahuja, fired 45 percent of its staff and defaulted on a $56 million payment to Inmarsat. The same report claims that Nokia Siemens Networks, the infrastructure arm of the handset maker has suspended network building projects until further notice. The split would cost Sprint around $74 million, but given the current state of affairs, that may look like a bargain.