Telecoms company Sprint Nextel Corp will temporarily deactivate the accounts of laptop broadband users if they consume more than their allotted share of data while roaming, the Wall Street Journal reported.

Sprint is changing its data service policies for laptop users with mobile broadband cards or USB modems, Mark Elliott, a company spokesman told the Journal.

However, the carrier does not plan to limit wireless connection for high volume smartphone customers on the its 3G network or the 4G network run by partner Clearwire Corp, Elliott said.

Sprint already has a cap of 5 gigabytes of data usage within the network, and 300 megabytes of roaming data, according to the paper.

The company will notify broadband customers through a text message or email when they hit 75 percent and 90 percent of their roaming data limit, the paper said.

Sprint's move to charge laptop users follows its bigger rival AT&T's decision to end unlimited data plan for smartphone customers.

On June 2, AT&T Inc said it would stop offering an unlimited pricing plan for new subscribers to its mobile data services.

Sprint could not be reached for comment.

(Reporting by Sakthi Prasad in Bangalore; Editing by Dan Lalor)

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