Sprint today announced plans to cut 4,000 jobs in response to a loss of 885,000 customers during the fourth quarter of last year.

"The No. 3 wireless carrier behind AT&T and Verizon Wireless has struggled since it merged with Nextel in 2005," notes USA Today's Leslie Cauley. "The $70 billion merger... was supposed to create a wireless behemoth that could steamroll the competition while pushing boundaries in wireless. Instead, Sprint stumbled as it tried to blend the starkly different cultures of the two companies while trying to reconcile their incompatible wireless technologies. Sprint wound up alienating customers, who bolted by the thousands."

"The picture for the balance of 2008 doesn't look good either," warns The Motley Fool's Dave Mock. "The company flatly stated that it anticipates 'continued downward pressure on subscriber trends, revenues, and profitability' for the coming year. Basically, it's going to stink being Sprint Nextel for a while."

"Sprint stock is down 65% since June of last year," according to the Wall Street Journal's Amol Sharma and Roger Cheng. "At the current price, with Sprint's market capitalization sliced to $24.5 billion, the company could become an attractive takeover target, analysts say, thought it isn't clear who could emerge as a buyer..."

More here from BusinessWeek ... more here from The Register ... more here from the AP ... more here from MarketWatch ... more here from InformationWeek ... more here from ZDNet ... and the press release is here.