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Apparently the Korean Exchange doesn’t like being left in the dark. Over the past day or so, they have order SK Telecom to let them know what’s really going on with their Sprint talks. Without hemming and hawing to the exchange, SK came clean. “We are studying various business opportunities in the United States but are not seeking to take control in (any) major U.S. mobile operator,” their statement read. This seems to go along with the revised reports from Tuesday afternoon, in that SK is looking for a technological partnership with Sprint. However, as with the “groundless” talks with Virgin Mobile, SK could merely be setting up a smokescreen here.

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Yesterday afternoon, a funny item hit my RSS reader. “SK Telecom In Strategic Talks With Sprint Nextel.” Great, I thought. He we go again with the merger cycle. A report will come out saying two companies are talking. One will deny it. If we’re lucky, the other will not deny, giving the deal hope in curious minds (and likely push the stock up). Then we’ll get a “source close to the situation” saying that yes, there are talks. And then it goes dark for a while, only to pick up steam when we’ve nearly forgotten about it. It seems we won’t get that kind of cycle with the Sprint talks with SK Telecom. While the original report said “any agreement could be weeks away,” a subsequent report says that talks are not centered around a merger at all.

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Sprint has long been an easy target of cellular critics. Still the nation’s No. 3 provider, they’ve slipped over the past year, year and a half. The biggest blow may have come with the announcement of their first quarter results: 1.1 million customers lost to rivals. But they’ve got new CEO Dan Hesse working to change all that. It’s not an easy task — he likens it to Ernest Shackleton, an explorer who lost his ship, but not his crew, in Antarctica. If Sprint is in fact going to turn around, they might want to ditch the ship and hope the crew can forge a new one.

Read the rest of Sprint: “perception of its service lags behind the reality.”…

Over the past month, we’ve seen two mergers in the wireless world. First came Verizon and Alltel, with the former acquiring the latter for roughly $27 billion. Late last week, we saw another, with Virgin Mobile purchasing Helio in a merger of Mobile Virtual Network Operators (MVNO). This leaves the cellular-loving world wondering: Who’s next? There’s a rumor swirling that T-Mobile’s parent, Deutsche Telekom, might want to buy Sprint. So let’s see what that might look like.

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We’ve spent a lot of time in this space discussing T-Mobile’s Hotspot @Home service. It’s a consumer boon, enabling savvy T-Mobile subscribers to ditch their landline service, sometimes reducing the charge for home calling from $30 to $10. A similar technology has been in development for quite a while, and made some noise last summer after T-Mobile’s Hotspot announcement, and then again this year at CTIA. It appears Sprint will debut it on July 15 with their Airave router.

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Over the past few months, Sprint has made it clear that turning the company around won’t happen overnight. In fact, just over a month ago they were saying that the turnaround was in the “third inning.” So maybe we’ve headed to the top of the fifth now, where the game is just a half-inning away from being official. This is good news for the nation’s No. 3 carrier, as rumors spread that AT&T and Verizon are seeing fewer number ports from former Sprint subscribers.

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When T-Mobile introduced prorated ETFs on Monday, they became the third of the Big Four to reduce the fees over time. True, their plan isn’t quite as nice as those offered by AT&T and Verizon. But it’s better than paying $200 four months before your contract is up. Still, it could be worse. It could always be worse, because you can be Sprint. The nation’s No. 3 wireless carrier still hasn’t introduced its own early termination fee policy. They plan to during 2008, as they said last november and reiterated recently.

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Over the past week, I’ve been asking anyone who might have an answer what will happen to Sprint come June 26, this Thursday, when it has to abandon a portion of its airwaves. Last week, the company petitioned the FCC for an extension. On Friday it was granted. Sprint now has another 30 days to shove off.

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If there are two things I love writing about, it’s baseball and Sprint. Baseball for love of the game, Sprint for love of the “what did they do now?” factor. The company, as we all know, continues to bleed subscribers, much to the delight of their competitors. The Washington Post sat down with the embroiled company’s CEO Dan Hesse to talk about what Sprint his doing, and how it’s going to take a while. And yes, Hesse said that the company was in the third inning of their rebuilding phase. But it seems like Sprint is playing like the Yankees right now, so it could still be a long game.

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It’s the oldest line in the book: Give me time, I can change. Sometimes it’s a sincere overture, sometimes it’s a crock. So what does it mean when Sprint says it? I’m not quite sure. But CEO Dan Hesse has said that turning the ship around won’t happen today, tomorrow, next month, or even next quarter. So what are shareholders to think of this? Essentially, Hesse is saying that they’ll be losing money until (at least) the end of this year. But please, keep your money with us, because it’ll pay off in the long run. With so much at stake, it’s tough to decide what to believe.

Read the rest of Sprint: Give us time to turn this thing around…