Reporting one disastrous quarter after another in recent times, Sprint Nextel finally changed its top leadership last month, hiring telecom vet Dan Hesse. Hesse has wasted no time in starting to streamline the beleaguered company, announcing thousands of layoffs just a few weeks ago.

Then, last week came the dirty work -- canning executives that have been present during the fall of Sprint Nextel during 2007. CFO Paul Saleh -- the former interim CEO -- was booted out, as are Chief Marketing Officer Tim Kelly and Sales Chief Mark Angelino. Sprint's marketing has been the target of pundits for quite some time, even with the recently "Sprint Ahead" corporate message that seems to go over the heads of most consumers based from what I have seen. It's a great message -- but entirely too complicated for the average wireless customer to understand.

Kelly was a longtime Sprint employee, while Saleh and Angelino were Nextel veterans. Hesse is doing what Michael Dell did a year ago when he took over control of the company he founded -- bring in a ton of new blood. It's too early to see what Hesse will do to revive Sprint with a bunch of new top managers, but whatever moves he makes will surely place Sprint in better competitive position than where it rests now, at the bottom of the heap compared to wireless carrier competition.