We all know what it means when someone is ready to cut some jobs, and in this case its Sprint. Sprint Nextel Corp. plans to lay off several thousand employees as newly installed Chief Executive Officer Dan Hesse seeks to show investors a new commitment to efficiency and cost discipline at the nation's No. 3 wireless carrier, people familiar with the matter say.

The scale of the layoffs aren't clear, but they are likely to be in the range of a few thousand, the people say. Sprint, which let 5,000 workers go last year, has about 60,000 employees.