Sprint executives think that the company\'s nationwide deployment of Clearwire\'s 2.5 GHz spectrum will help it catch up to LTE market leaders Verizon Wireless and AT&T Mobility, according to a financial analyst research note.

As noted by Barro\'s, Wells Fargo Securities and investors met earlier this week with Sprint CEO Dan Hesse and CFO Joe Euteneuer, who provided more details and color on the company\'s Network Vision network modernization efforts, the first phase of which the carrier expects to complete by mid-2014 (as part of that, Sprint expects to cover 200 million POPs with LTE by year-end). The second phase will be the deployment of Clearwire\'s 2.5 GHz airwaves on a nationwide basis, and Sprint\'s management expects to reveal more details on that part of the company\'s plans "at some point in the not-too-distant future", according to note, written by Wells Fargo Securities analysts J. Davis Herbert and Eric Fishel.

According to the note, Hesse said Verizon has "the best network in the industry and it has paid off enormously". Sprint hopes to catch up over the next several years by offering the "best network in the world". The Sprint executives said tests have shown that once Sprint is through its entire overhaul, its network speeds will be "blazing fast". (Clearwire executives have said in the past that, using carrier aggregation technology, the company could offer theoretical peak speeds of up to 168 Mbps in 2014 on LTE using its spectrum.) Upon completion of Sprint\'s network overhaul, Sprint expects 90 percent of its backhaul to be driven by Ethernet over fiber and the remaining over microwave.