Word on the street is that Sprint is currently in heated discussions with Ericsson -- the world's largest network infrastructure company -- to take over management and maintenance of its vast back end along with somewhere between 5,000 to 7,000 of the carrier's employees in an effort to lower costs by about 20 percent as its subscriber counts and tends both stay soft. Interestingly, Sprint already sold some of its towers to TowerCo last year for over half a billion dollars, so it's not clear exactly how Ericsson fits into the puzzle yet -- but at any rate, Sprint would apparently be paying something on the order of $2 billion over the next several years for Ericsson to do its thing. In light of this, it's kind of ironic that Sprint doesn't sell a single Sony Ericsson handset, isn't it?

That sale of virtually all of Sprint's tower infrastructure announced back in July has now been finalized, giving buyer TowerCo a whole boatload of CDMA, iDEN, and WiMAX footprint it didn't have just a few hours ago. Sprint looks at the $670 million sale as a way to buy itself some "additional liquidity" and "focus more closely on our core business of providing communications services to our customers" (but let's be honest, it's really just about the additional liquidity); TowerCo, meanwhile, sounds like it's anticipating that it'll be able to lease out space on the towers to other carriers as they expand down the road. For its part, Sprint wasted no time signing up for a long-term lease on the very towers it just sold, but here's our doozy of a question: dare we say they're now a TowerCo MVNO?

[Thanks, moochy989]

Cell towers have obviously always been a danger to aircraft and the occasional light changer or BASE jumper, but the FCC's been facing scrutiny from environmental groups for years over the risks towers pose to another group of fliers: birds. A February court battle brought against the feds by the American Bird Conservancy -- dealing specifically with the threat of so-called "tower kill" on migratory birds in the Gulf region -- saw a ruling demanding that the FCC finally get down to business and come up with a game plan for dealing with the threat that cell sites pose to birds, particularly at night. Naturally, there's still some hemming and hawing, legal wrangling, and wringing of hands going on amongst tower owners and their allies, largely over concerns that the ruling's going to lead to denied and delayed applications for new tower construction. Apparently no one's bothered to teach those little guys what the red lights mean?

[Via textually.org]

Color us flabbergasted, but tower climbing is being deemed "the most dangerous job in America" by Edwin Foulke Jr., head of the Occupational, Safety and Health Administration (OSHA). A recent look at the industry found that five climbers perished during a 12-day span this spring, bringing the grand total to seven in 2008. Of course, there are already remarks that the recent rush to expand 3G networks could be somehow connected, with Craig Lekutis, president of WirelessEstimator and a former tower industry manager, stating that the "recent spate of accidents must be viewed as an industry-wide cause for concern, both on the carrier and climber levels." In order to help bring awareness to the intrinsic hazards, OSHA is pushing a "Tie or Die!" campaign -- which, honestly, sounds a bit brash on the surface -- but we're all for reminding folks to anchor down that somehow have the ability to forget.

[Image courtesy of Verizon Wireless]