Photo courtesy of iStockphoto, Doug Cannell

Sprint today announced an agreement to sell approximately 3,300 of its cell towers to TowerCo for about $670 million in cash - under the terms of the agreement, TowerCo will then lease the towers back to Sprint as needed.

"By leasing rather than owning these network facilities, we can better focus on our core business of providing communications services to consumers, businesses and government customers," says Sprint's Bob Azzi, putting a brave face on a pretty sad state of affairs...

The transaction is expected to close in 90 days.

More here from RTTNews ... more here from Reuters ... more here from Sprint Connection ... and the press release is here.