Sprint Nextel became the first mobile operator in the U.S. to offer a music download service last fall, followed by larger rival Verizon Wireless a couple of months later. The country's number three carrier’s Sprint Music Store charges a $2.50 premium for over-the-air (OTA) downloads of tracks compared to Verizon's $1.99 per song rate; both much higher than the industry standard 99 cent price for PC downloads.

Sprint nonetheless sold a million songs during the first three months of operation - partially driven by promotions - compared to a million downloads for Apple iTunes during its first week, for example.

The carrier would like to increase demand for its handset music service through a subscription-based approach to audio downloads for heavy users and an expansion of its Sirius Satellite Radio offering. A single monthly payment plan would be modeled after the all-you-can-eat PC music download services from Napster and Yahoo! Neither of which have been particularly successful compared to single-download services like iTunes.

Sprint Chief Operating Officer Len Lauer said at the World Congress of Sports conference, "We think it would open up more demand," Reuters reports. Lauer did not reveal how much a subscription service would cost and said the details haven’t been worked out yet.

Sprint already enables subscribers to listen to 20 Sirius radio channels on their handsets. According to Lauer, the carrier would complement this service by enabling users to click, buy and download tracks they hear on the radio over their cell phones to their desktop or handsets sometime later on in 2006.

"We'd like to have the capability later this year that the customer listens to a song and says, 'I want to buy that song," Lauer noted during his keynote address at the conference.

The delivery of e-mail, the Web, music, games, TV, etc. is the future for carriers who've seen their voice profits drop considerably over the last few years. Data and content services like music downloads increase ARPU (average revenue per user) and are supported by the faster 3G networks carriers rolled out over the last several years—EV-DO in Sprint Nextel's case.