Sprint Nextel Corporation released its fourth quarter and year end 2009 earnings this morning. Sprint 4G is available in 27 markets, serving over 30 million people with plans of serving 120 million more people by the end of 2010. Sprint Nextel plans to add many more U.S. markets, including Houston, Boston, Washington D.C. New York and San Francisco.

Sprint invested $1.1 billion into Clearwire in 2009, helping launch WiMax services in those 27 U.S. markets.

“We continue to closely manage costs, and in 2009 we generated the highest annual free cash flow since the merger,” said Dan Hesse, Sprint Nextel CEO. ” The fourth quarter completion of the Virgin Mobile USA, Inc. and iPCS, Inc., acquisitions, as well as our additional large investment in Clearwire, are important to our future.”

Sprint Nextel suffered a net loss of $980 million, at a loss of 34 cents per share loss in the fourth quarter. For 2009, results were consolidated net operating revenues of $32.3 billion and a diluted loss of 84 cents per share. The company suffered a loss of 69,000 retail subscribers in the fourth quarter.

The free cash flow of $666 million in the fourth quarter and $2.8 billion for year end 2009 is the highest in Sprint Nextel history. The company repaid $1 billion to its creditors and paid $560 million in net cash to acquire Virgin Mobile USA, Inc. and iPCS, Inc. Sprint ended 2009 with $6.6 billion in assets.

58 percent of Sprint customers became prepaid with the acquisition of Virgin Mobile USA. The transfer of subscribers from wholesale and affiliates to retail during the fourth quarter was 5.4 million.

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