Can Sprint Handle iPhone Traffic?

The Sprint Nextel team may be excited to finally have the chance to promote Apple iPhone. It has been a long road for the company to finally get here. But not everyone is confident about Sprint being able to handle all the load that iPhone users will put on it. Let’s not forget that AT&T has had a ton of issues dealing with that very problem in the past. Even though Sprint may or may not get iPhone 5, it has been preparing for the opportunity:

Steve [Elfman] and his team have been relentless on watching the existing network to make sure that we are spending the capital we need and to make sure we don’t create a bad user experience–irrespective of all the rumors

explained Euteneuer, CFO at Sprint. We still do not know a whole lot about Apple’s plans when it comes to dealing with Sprint. Some have suggested that the company may only get to promote iPhone 4. Others feel confident that Sprint iPhone 5 is in the works. When it comes to unlimited data plans, there are already hints that Sprint may not keep them.

If we got to a point where we thought that keeping an unlimited plan wasn’t going to create the profitable marketplace that we wanted, then we would have to look for change,

said Euteneuer. Other carriers have already had to change their unlimited plans to tiered ones. Sprint won’t be any different. As the Case-Mate leak shows, iPhone 5 will be fairly different from iPhone 4. The demand for the device is expected to be very strong. That could hurt Sprint in the short-term but could do the company wonders in the long run.

Are you excited about Sprint getting the iPhone?