“The company is taking this action in a careful manner to ensure that there is no impact on the improved customer experience that has been reflected in much higher levels of satisfaction in customer surveys and in independent performance tests,” Sprint said in a statement. “Sprint has pledged to not waver on the company’s commitment to quality service and products….The impact on geographic locations will vary, and many impacted positions will be eliminated by Dec. 31, 2009.”

Nice. Just in time for the holidays, too.

“We still have a backlog of subscribers but it’s not unmanageable and we get shipments every week,” Brust told attendees of the Wachovia Equity Conference. “We’ll be short for a while but we’re catching up.”

Good thing. The new Palm (PALM) handset is not going to be much good at stemming subscriber losses if you can’t keep it in inventory. And as Sprint (S) well knows, there are other phones on the market, including one that’s $100 cheaper than the Pre, without the rebate.

Oh, and speaking of the iPhone 3GS, Brust says Apple’s latest handset hasn’t been having much of an impact on sales the Pre, though Apple (AAPL) sold one million units compared with a reported 50,000 for the Pre during its first weekend at market. “We don’t see any big change since the iPhone came out yet,” Brust said. “That may happen.”

That may happen. Heh.

Apparently, everything but Nextel is on the table.

Or, rather, Nextel is still on the table, but no one’s interested in buying it at the $5 billion+ price Sprint’s asking. Said Chris King, an analyst at Stifel Nicolaus, “I’m not sure they were going to see that kind of valuation, especially in this type of capital markets environment.”

Not the most attractive of acquisition targets. But beauty is in the eye of the beholder, in this case T-Mobile parent Deutsche Telekom (DT) which is reportedly considering a bid for the wireless outfit, whose worsening losses have left it ripe for a buyout. By swallowing Sprint (S), DT could gain some spectrum in the States and stave off a price war between the mobile carriers, or so the “thinking” goes.

Thing is, an acquisition of Sprint entails an acquisition of Sprint’s problems–and there are many. It would also require DT, which operates a GSM/EDGE network, to manage Sprint’s 3G CDMA network and Nextel’s legacy iDEN system. That’s three different network standards. And then there’s Sprint’s WiMax operation, XHOM, to deal with. That’s the makings of a real Greek tragedy of a business story right there. Said Avian Securities analyst Matthew Thornton, “While the differing network technology standard does not necessarily eliminate the possibility of a deal, it does significantly raise the costs and complexity of the combination.”

Michael Nelson, an analyst at Stanford Group, agreed. “You really cannot underestimate the level of complexity that that entails,” he told Bloomberg. “There is a significant amount of integration risk.”