Reston's Vibrant Economy, Part 20: What's a million measly customers?

Sprint Nextel-N-Bob's Kansas-Style BBQ continues its downward slide into awesome right-sizedness, losing more than a million customers and $505 million as it whiled away the first three months of the year, forwarding each other repetitive Footloose-themed blog posts about its awesome headquarters relocation to Kansas and apparently letting more than a half billion dollar bills flutter away in a gentle spring breeze after someone accidentally left a window open or something.

We may not be sophisticated daytraders, but generally we know it's probably time to panic when analysts say things like this:

"This is a nightmare game of whack-a-mole where new problems keep popping up faster that you can address," said Bernstein analyst Craig Moffett.

But everything's gonna be fine, because they have, as they say in the movies, a plan:

Sprint, which acquired Reston-based Nextel Communications for $36 billion two years ago, may sell Nextel for a fraction of that price, according to one Wall Street analyst.

So here's the plan:

1. Buy failing telecom provider for $36 billion; watch its market value crater and sell for a pittance at the absolute bottom of the market
2. ???
3. Profit!!!

Another half-billion here, another million lost customers there, and they'll get Step 2 figured out.