Sprint’s LTE Rollout Stymied By “Uh, Birds” As It Plans To Activate Four New Markets

Sprint seems to be taking the slow and steady approach to their LTE light-up, but it turns out that’s not entirely by design. When asked about how confident the carrier was about meeting its goal of 12,000 live LTE sites by the end of the year, Sprint Networks Operations President Steve Elfman pointed out a particularly peculiar stumbling block.

“We’ve got several hundred sites that are done and ready to turn on and we’re waiting for backhaul,” he said. “We got several hundred others that uh, basically, we have birds nesting on them. Once the birds leave, we’ll be able to turn those sites on.”

Naturally, Elfman didn’t elaborate on where those bird-afflicted sites were — after all, the last thing Sprint customers probably want to hear is that they can’t jump on a new high-speed data network because some avian jerks decided to set up shop on a tower near them. What’s perhaps more impressive is the fact that hundreds of these sites are apparently affected, though there’s no word yet on whether or not Sprint plans to send a few dudes with brooms out to scare those birds away.

Thankfully, there’s a bit of silver lining here. Frustrating fowl aside, the carrier has plans to light up new LTE markets before Labor Day. In addition to the 15 markets that have already been graced with Sprint LTE, users in Baltimore, MD, Gainesville, GA, Manhattan/Junction City, KS, and Sherman-Denison, TX will soon be able to put those Galaxy Nexii and EVO 4G LTEs to good use.

[via Engadget]