Sprint is one of the first major U.S. carriers to say that it will use Google’s Android ­operating system, which is currently in the works. What’s your relationship like with the company? Actually, we’re doing a lot with them. We’re working on Android. We’re part of the Open Handset Alliance [an industry group that is working to develop applications for Android]. We believe we’re by far the most open, if you will, of the wireless carriers. We make it very open for applications developers to write software for Sprint wireless products. The relationship with companies like Google will only help that.

Since Sprint has to do something radical to reverse its fortunes, opening your network entirely could be an interesting move. Will you go all the way to that point? If we can. The more open we can be, the more we’re going to attract more applications to our platforms, which means we’ll attract more users. It’s a way of differentiating.

Does that mean you’ll be like the open internet? Users could ­download anything? Customize their phones in any way? I think we’re going to be ahead of Android.

You are? I’m not the expert, but there have been some delays in terms of Android. I don’t know when you’re really going to see that product released. But in this Sprint environment today you can have a variety of operating systems. You’ve got Windows Mobile, Palm, RIM’s BlackBerry. Our customers are going to have just about as much openness as they want.

After you bought Nextel, its customers began fleeing. Nextel’s phones use a separate push-to-talk network called iDEN, and critics have said that Sprint should sell Nextel or spin it off. What’s your current thinking? We’re committed to making iDEN very successful, but we’re not wed to a particular business model or structure for any of our divisions. We have a bunch of new handsets on our iDEN network. We’re reinvigorating the brand, but we’re always going to keep all of our options open.

How much time do you think you have to turn things around? I don’t know. All I can do is show consistent improvement, and I really can’t predict what’s going to happen.

Are you committed to keeping Sprint Nextel in Kansas? Yes.

Is that a handicap? Can you get a brilliant engineer out of Stanford University to come here? We’ve had absolutely no problem recruiting. Kansas City is the most difficult city in the United States to get people to leave. It’s true. You can’t get anybody to leave once they’re here because of the quality of life and affordability.

This office is pretty grand. You came from a startup, and your ­office was a lot like this, wasn’t it? Oh yeah. [Rolls his eyes.] I had an unfinished door, and my desk was a slab of wood on poles. One of the advantages of running a startup is you realize how inexpensively you can do things.

You put yourself in a Sprint ­commercial. Do you think you can change people’s perceptions of this brand? A lot of people forget that the cur­­rent AT&T brand was created in 1984. It was the Bell System until the break-up, and AT&T had never been associated with any product. So we really created that from scratch. We had to describe every action in terms of either making deposits or withdrawals in the brand bank. And it became a tremendous brand. I believe we can create that at Sprint.

Will we see you in any more commercials? The agency and our marketing team are suggesting I do another, so it’s quite possible.