Sprint's second quarter earnings once again show mixed results as the company tries to revamp itself to remain competitive with AT&T and Verizon. The company posted a widening net loss of $1.4 billion as the company pours money into launching LTE services, on top of having paid a steep premium to finally acquire the iPhone. Sprint says they sold 1.5 million iPhones during the second quarter, forty percent of which were postpaid (contract) customers. The company also says they saw postpaid net additions of 442,000, more than double the number added last quarter.

While the company is seeing widening losses, Sprint executives feel it's necessary so they can not only launch LTE, but retrofit their entire array of base stations as part of a massive overhaul that will make the entire network more streamlined and energy efficient. The company's upgrade project involves replacing current network hardware and base stations capable of utilizing multiple bands, including the company's 800 MHz, 1.9 GHz spectrum, 4G 2.5 GHz WiMax, and LTE.

Recall too that Sprint actually tried to add even more moving parts into the mix with an acquisition of MetroPCS, which the Sprint board vetoed at the very last second. As for the huge premium Sprint paid for the iPhone, they don't expect to actually profit off the iPhone until 2015.

In the end, all of this should put Sprint in a much better position to compete with AT&T and Verizon, if they can financially survive the next few years. While Sprint continues to try and use unlimited smartphone data as a competitive edge, growing financial pressure means it's still likely that the unlimited data offer will die sometime during that time frame.