NEW YORK (Standard&Poor's) April 16, 2010—Standard&Poor's Ratings Services said today that its ratings on Overland Park, Kan.-based wireless carrier Sprint Nextel Corp. (BB-/Negative/--) are not affected by the company's announcement that it is pursuing a new $2.25 billion senior unsecured revolving credit facility due toward the end of 2013, which will replace the current facility that is set to expire at the end of 2010. The new facility immediately reduces the company's availability to around $550 million from $2.7 billion, after $1.7 billion of letters of credit (LOCs) outstanding related to the FCC rebanding process, although it also extends the maturity and availability will increase as the company makes progress to reduce the FCC LOC for
