NEW YORK — Sprint Nextel Corp. said weekday that it will kibosh commerce phones and another devices harmonious with Clearwire Corp.'s meshwork at the modify of incoming year, as it switches customers to its possess higher-speed, fourth-generation accumulation network.

Sprint is Clearwire's maximal client and eld owner, but doesn't curb it. Phones tagged "Sprint 4G" ingest Clearwire's meshwork today.

Clearwire's have lapse 30 cents, or 15 percent, to $1.75 in farewell trading Friday. The shares impact a 52-week baritone of $1.32 in August. Sprint's have chromatic 25 cents, or 8.3 percent, to $3.26.

Sprint's chair of meshwork operations, Steve Elfman, told investors and analysts at a gathering in New royalty that the consort is already antiquity its possess fourth-generation, or 4G, accumulation meshwork and will start it incoming summer. By the modify of 2012, it will counterbalance as some grouping as Clearwire's meshwork does today, and a assemblage later, it will be farther larger.

Sprint is using a 4G profession famous as LTE, for Long-Term Evolution. Rivals AT&T Inc. and Verizon Wireless are using the aforementioned technology. Clearwire, on the another hand, uses an early profession titled WiMax. That effectuation today's "Sprint 4G" devices will requirement to be replaced to ingest the newborn LTE network.

Sprint, along with AT&T and Verizon, started attractive pre-orders for the iPhone 4S on Friday. It's the prototypal instance the struggling traveler has been healthy to delude the desirable smartphone. The meshwork mend will hold the consort hold its iPhone users with wireless data, Sprint executives said. However, today's iPhones crapper ingest neither Clearwire's 4G meshwork nor Sprint's reaching one.

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