“Without a hit phone or strong brand to lure consumers, Sprint Nextel Corp. increasingly is pushing discounts in a bid to reverse two years of subscriber losses.” That’s the opening sentence from Friday’s Wall Street Journal article about the company.

Sprint lost over 1.5 billion dollars in the fourth quarter, along with over a million subscribers. The company lost nearly ten percent of its customers last year. By contrast, its two biggest competitors, Verizon and AT&T, added over three million accounts in the last quarter of ’08 alone.

The article goes on to say, “One of Sprint’s remaining weapons is to undercut rivals on pricing.” Really? If you’re wheezing, challenging your healthy competitors to a footrace is not a great idea. It’s like the dark knight in Monty Python and the Holy Grail, whose belligerent taunting of King Arthur grew more vigorous with each limb he lost. The end game of such a strategy is not good.

Innovation is the coin of the realm in the telecommunications industry, because it’s the only thing keeping companies from price wars borne of commoditization. That and effective branding, which will play an increasingly role as the industry continues to mature. Sprint isn’t carrying a sharp sword in either area.