Sprint (NYSE: S) Nextel is in the midst of deciding the buildout and capital requirements of the WiMax and XOHM networks into next year. Speaking at the UBS Global Media Conference in New York, the telecom’s acting CEO/CFO Paul Saleh said that the company wants to simplify its service offerings and is being cautious of entering any similar deals to the one that recently broke down with Clearwire.

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Saleh identified what he called a difference between the market advantage for XOHM, saying that he wants to be sure that such a deal can attract the support of investors. “We’re looking at what’s going to be the extent deployment of WiMax and XOHM in 2008. The structure could take multiple forms. We were in discussions before with Clearwire, about having different geographic splits, they would have 30 percent, we would have 70 percent of the country.”

—Avoiding Confusion: He said that he felt there was a great misunderstanding as to why the company walked away from the deal. Essentially, he said it became too complex. “The transaction would have had a potentially confusing experience in terms of what parts of the country we would have maintained and what part they would have been responsible for. And we cannot afford anything that detracts from focusing our business on simplification. We have a group of people looking at that now. Our attention, mainly, is on the core of the business. We were a little behind on capital spending and are looking at ways of financing this business that would generate higher returns and attracting capital to the business.”

—Customer Retention: Citing high rates of recommendation from existing customers, Saleh said he plans to make a news series of appeals to current subscribers. “I think we’ll be able to offer favored, long-term customers deals, like an airline or hotel does,” as a way of stemming the tide of customer losses.