Gold said that Sprint could indeed be paying Apple $20 billion over four years for some version of the iPhone, although that would be expensive compared to speculation abouyt multi-year agreements that other carriers such as Verizon and AT&T reached with Apple for the iPhone.

"It means that Sprint has to sell a lot of iPhones," Gold added.

Sprint said it would not comment on the speculation.

Matt Hamblen covers mobile and wireless, smartphones and other handhelds, and wireless networking for Computerworld. Follow Matt on Twitter at or subscribe to . His e-mail address is .

in Computerworld's Macintosh Topic Center.