Salvation for Sprint Nextel?

Sprint has struggled with high customer attrition, which the company has blamed on poor customer service. During its fourth-quarter earnings report, Sprint said that the number of wireless subscribers dropped by 108,000 in the quarter due to declines in post-paid iDEN users and prepaid Boost mobile users. Total post-paid subscribers, a favorite metric among analysts, declined by 683,000.

"We are taking the customer defection issue very seriously, and we're addressing it," said Sprint CEO Dan Hesse during the company's fourth-quarter conference call. "Because we have not provided the right experience, customers are leaving us."

Sprint will deliver first-quarter results on May 12, with analysts expecting a profit of 2 cents a share on revenue of $9.40 billion, according to Thomson Reuters. However, net subscriber adds (or declines) will undoubtedly receive more attention from analysts and Deutsche Telekom.

The possibility of a buyout also brings up questions over Sprint's long-rumored merger of its WiMax division with Clearwire (CLWR). In March, Clearwire said it has been active in talks to hammer out an agreement with Sprint for a deal that would create a new company that combines Sprint's licenses in the 2.5-gigahertz wireless spectrum and Clearwire's spectrum in the same and adjoining air waves.

The following month, Sprint said the commercial launch of the high-speed WiMax network had been postponed, leading to questions about the company's ability to fund the technology. However, Comcast (CMCSA) and Time Warner (TWX) were said to be considering offering their backing. Intel (INTC) has indicated it's interested, and Google (GOOG) is believed to be thinking about participating in the project.

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