Overland Park

Sprint Nextel Corp. said Wednesday it has reached a "memo of understanding" that would settle a series of shareholder lawsuits challenging its $483 million acquisition of Virgin Mobile USA.

In a regulatory filing, the Overland Park, Kansas-based company said it and Virgin were releasing additional details about the structure of the deal and the negotiations that led up to the two companies reaching an agreement.

Struggling carrier Sprint Nextel announced Thursday that it will contract with Ericsson to run its mobile-phone network. The agreement has a seven-year life span, and the company positioned it as a win for itself and its customers.

"Sprint is breaking away from competitors," the company said, calling the move "an operational best practice for network operators" that has been "proven successful worldwide and praised by business experts and communications analysts."

$4.5 Billion To $5 Billion

Sprint Nextel Corp. said Friday it plans to sell a chunk of its cellular network in the Midwest to comply with an Illinois court decision.

The Overland Park, Kan.-based wireless provider said it is working with financial adviser Citi to find interested buyers for its Nextel-branded network in parts of Illinois, Iowa, Michigan and Nebraska.

It said the sale would have minimal effect on its financial results and customers would not see a change in service.

When Palm Inc.'s and Sprint Nextel Corp.'s latest bundle of smart phone joy, the Pre, arrives Saturday, it will be entering an increasingly crowded market backed by parents that have a lot riding on its success.

The Pre -- which costs $200 with a two-year service plan and rebate -- might be most important to Sunnyvale, California-based Palm, the very company that helped usher in the handheld computing era with the original Palm Pilot in 1996. These days Palm needs a resurgence in a market largely dominated by Apple Inc.'s iPhone and Research In Motion Ltd.'s BlackBerry devices.

Sprint Nextel Corp., the nation's third-largest wireless service provider, on Monday reported a larger first-quarter loss on declining revenue and a charge for job cuts announced in January.

But its adjusted results narrowly beat estimates and its shares climbed 14 percent in morning trading.

Sprint continued to lose subscribers but far fewer than it did in the last three months of 2008. The improvement, however, reflected a sharp increase in prepaid customers while the number of subscribers who sign up for annual contracts and are more valuable to Sprint fell.

Sprint Nextel Corp. watched another 1.3 million wireless subscribers head for its competitors during the third quarter, leading the company to post a loss that sent its stock skidding Friday.

Dan Hesse, the Overland Park, Kan.-based company's chief executive, told analysts that Sprint Nextel plans to work harder to attract new customers during the upcoming holiday season but acknowledged "we have yet to turn the corner."

"We made good progress on our operational priorities in the third quarter and resolved some key issues," he said. "Still, subscriber losses are too high."

Congress has asked Embarq Corp. about its work with a company that tracks online subscribers' Web traffic for advertising purposes, part of growing concern about Internet privacy.

Overland Park, Kan.-based Embarq is the nation's fourth-largest traditional telephone company with 1.34 million high-speed Internet subscribers in 14 states. It has been linked in the past with NebuAd Inc., a company that works with Internet service providers to tailor targeted ads based on what Web sites a particular subscriber visits.

Although a large Internet service provider has backed away from technology that tracks subscribers' Web use in order to deliver personalized advertising, two other broadband companies said Wednesday they are still considering whether to deploy it.

Phone companies Embarq Corp. and CenturyTel Inc. have both completed trials of the same tracking system, from online advertising company NebuAd Inc., and are now considering whether to proceed.

The Federal Communications Commission on Thursday agreed to give Sprint Nextel Corp. more time to swap some wireless spectrum frequencies with public safety agencies.

Sprint was facing a June 26 deadline to vacate channels that its Nextel wireless network uses in the 800 MHz band. The swap is designed to eliminate radio interference in that portion of the spectrum for the thousands of public safety agencies across the country that regularly use it.

Dan Hesse, chief executive officer at Sprint Nextel Corp. for less than five months, faced tough questions Tuesday about the company's continued trouble keeping wireless subscribers.

Overland Park, Kan.-based Sprint, the nation's third-largest wireless provider, lost about a million customers in 2007 and reported Monday that it lost 1.07 million more in the first quarter of 2008 alone.