Sprint spun them off because they thought the teaming up with cable would be more advantageous. They thought they could sell bundles of wireless service cable and home internet. Can anybody say Pivot? I thought you could! They though they could provide the backbone as well as the switching for all the cable cos home phone offerings. Almost none of them use Sprint anymore. Can anybody remember SpectrumCo? Yep, I do! How about Clearwire? Yep, Comcast, TWC and Brighthouse were investors in that one. So Sprint and the cable cos have had one failed joint venture after another.