Dan Hesse, Sprint Nextel's (NYSE: S) new CEO, has last week resigned his seat on the Nokia (NYSE: NOK) board of directors, according to the world's largest maker of mobile phones. With Sprint and Nokia basically not doing a single bit of business with each other these days, this is no surprise.

Nokia has never really jumped on the CDMA bandwagon, which is the technical standard Sprint Nextel predominantly uses for its U.S. wireless network. Nokia, though, is a huge supplier of handsets to AT&T (NYSE: T) and T-Mobile USA -- two of Sprint's largest wireless competitors.

The challenge Hesse has in front of him is no small potato. Sprint Nextel is in dire need of leadership that will bring results, consistent profits and some form of marketing that will steal customers back from the competition.

That competition, by the way, has punished Sprint in the last year by taking hundreds of thousands of customers away. Hesse's challenge will be whether he could manage the existing Sprint-Nextel post-merger mess in progress and get customer additions back on track for the wireless carrier.