Severance, Exit Costs and Asset Impairments

9 Months Ended

Sep. 30, 2012

Restructuring and Related Activities [Abstract]

Severance, Exit Costs and Asset Impairments [Text Block]

Note 9. Severance, Exit Costs and Asset Impairments

Severance and Exit Costs Activity

For the three and nine-month periods endedSeptember 30, 2012, we recognized costs of $22 million and $206 million, respectively, solely attributable to our Wireless segment, primarily related to lease exit costs associated with taking certain Nextel platform sites off-air in 2012, for which we no longer expect to receive any economic benefit. In addition, for the three and nine-month periods endedSeptember 30, 2012, we recognized costs of $12 million ($8 million Wireless; $4 million Wireline) and $39 million ($21 million Wireless; $18 million Wireline), respectively, in "Cost of services and products" within the consolidated statements of comprehensive loss related to payments that will continue to be made under our backhaul access contracts for which we will no longer be receiving any economic benefit. We did not recognize any severance or exit costs in the nine-month period endedSeptember 30, 2011. We expect to incur significant additional exit costs in the future as we continue to take Nextel platform sites off-air and transition our existing backhaul architecture to a replacement technology for our remaining network sites. We estimate the amount of lease exit costs to be recognized in future periods for sites estimated to be taken off-air during 2013 to be approximately $300 to $400 million, depending upon the timing and remaining expected contractual payments. The amount of exit costs expected to be recognized with backhaul access contracts cannot be estimated at this time.

The following provides the activity in the severance and exit costs liability included in "Accounts payable", "Accrued expenses and other current liabilities" and "Other liabilities" within the consolidated balance sheets:

			2012 Activity
	December 31, 2011		Net Expense		Cash Payments and Other			September 30, 2012
	(in millions)
Lease exit costs	$	58	$	206	$	(28	)	$	236
Severance costs	21		—		(4		)	17
Access exit costs	—		39		(1		)	38
	$	79	$	245	$	(33	)	$	291

Asset Impairments

For the nine-month period endedSeptember 30, 2012, we recorded asset impairments of $84 million of construction in progress costs consisting of $18 million associated with a decision to utilize fiber backhaul, which we expect to be more cost effective, rather than microwave backhaul and $66 million of capitalized assets specific to the spectrum hosting arrangement that we no longer intend to deploy (see Note 11). For the three-month period endedSeptember 30, 2012 and the nine-month period endedSeptember 30, 2011, there were no asset impairments recorded.