Sprint has been going through quite a bit in the way of change in the last several months. Its bid to merge with T-Mobile (News - Alert) has, at last report, been temporarily abandoned despite recent moves to take particular care in pulling together all the necessary information to fend of regulator challenges. Now, new reports have emerged to say that Sprint even has gone so far to switch out its CEO, turning to Brightstar (News - Alert)'s Marcelo Claure—one of Sprint's board members, at last report—to step into the position.

Claure joined the Sprint (News - Alert) board back in January, and has close connection with Sprint majority stakeholder SoftBank in Japan thanks to its majority stake in wireless distributor firm Brightstar. While Sprint representatives weren't commenting on the maneuver, reports suggested that Sprint CEO Dan Hesse (News - Alert) might have been on the way out in rapid fashion, and these reports appear to have materialized.  The abandonment of the T-Mobile bid, meanwhile, seems to be related to a move by Illiad, a French carrier that reportedly put up $15 billion in a bid to land a majority stake of T-Mobile.

But then, the decision to drop Hesse and bring in Claure instead could be related to several other factors, including a recent reported wave of losses in terms of customer numbers and difficulties associated with augmenting Sprint's network. The increased competition in the field isn't helping matters, as T-Mobile's “Uncarrier” stance seems to be working quite well for it all told, and AT&T and Verizon show no signs of giving up an ongoing stranglehold on the number one and two slots.

All of these factors added together seems to point to one clear sign: Sprint needs a new plan, and it needs one in rapid fashion. Of course, one of the best possible ways to get a new plan quickly is to bring in a new planmaker, who will likely have a completely different worldview and plan of attack from the previous guy. That makes the move to swap out CEOs make quite a bit of sense in retrospect, but it offers some other key value points as well.

Sprint is suffering in the market. T-Mobile's rapid gains with its new advertising and new focus on offering more options to the customer base have given it quite a bit of advantage. AT&T and Verizon have the market muscle behind operations to keep a top stance for some time to come. But what's left for Sprint? Well, one immediate idea that springs to mind is that maybe Sprint is looking in the wrong direction for merger targets. Sure, merging numbers three and four made sense, but maybe Sprint needs to be looking to, say, a U.S. Cellular (News - Alert) or a Boost Mobile to get some edge. Augments to the network certainly couldn't hurt matters, especially not at this point, but Sprint's likely to need more than that to really compete. There may be something in Sprint's examination of social media-only pricing, but only time will tell if that works. Still, there's a clear commitment to trying new things afoot at Sprint, and that could be just what the company needs to make its move in the market.

But it is clear Sprint is not taking matters lying down. Though this CEO swap may not ultimately do the job in the long run, it's a pretty safe bet that it will do at least something, and may reveal something that right now isn't quite so obvious.