Sprint eyes tie-ups with gadget makers: report

(Reuters) - Sprint Nextel Corp is looking to rent the excess capacity on its network to makers of consumer gadgets, the Wall Street Journal said.

The No. 3 U.S. mobile service provider is talking with companies such as navigation device maker Garmin Ltd, photography company Eastman Kodak Co and storage device maker SanDisk Corp about delivering wireless Internet service for their products, the paper said, citing a person familiar with the matter.

In these deals, Sprint will rent out its network and generally collect fees from manufacturers based on how much data is transmitted to the devices, the paper said.

Sprint, which has invested heavily in rolling out a high-speed data network, already handles wireless book downloads for Amazon.com Inc's Kindle reader, the paper said.

Sprint could not immediately be reached for comment by Reuters.

(Reporting by S. John Tilak in Bangalore; Editing by Hans Peters)