Kansas City, Mo ? Telecommunications giant Sprint Corp. already was getting tossed like a dinghy in a hurricane before one of its business partners dumped another bucket of water into the hold.

Earlier this week, one of the companies that owns and operates part of Sprint’s wireless network charged in a lawsuit that Sprint’s financial practices were forcing the partner into bankruptcy.

The company, iPCS Inc. of Barrington Hills, Ill., is demanding that Sprint PCS either be ordered to buy it — at an estimated cost of hundreds of millions of dollars — or negotiate a new contract.

By itself, that problem wouldn’t be huge, but several other Sprint PCS affiliates also are facing similar financial problems. And for Sprint, it’s been a rough winter.

The Overland Park, Kan.-based company’s top two executives are being forced out, reportedly over the use of questionable tax shelters they used for stock options. The company’s choice for its next CEO is bogged down in a court fight with his current employer, rival BellSouth Corp.

On top of that, overall revenue is flat and Sprint’s wireless division continues to lose piles of cash. Last quarter it was $255 million in the red, though earnings from the long-distance and other divisions offset the loss.

Shares in the wireless division have fallen 9 percent this year; stock in the rest of the company is down 10 percent.

Shareholders have sued and more than 15,000 employees have been laid off since October 2001.

“This is just the last thing Sprint needs right now,” Jeff Kagan, an independent telecom analyst in Atlanta, said of the iPCS suit. “They are distracted, with a lot of very big issues on their plate. You have to wonder which straw is going to break the camel’s back, because they are all big straws.”

Sprint PCS’s 10 wireless affiliates manage nearly 2 million of the 17 million customers in Sprint’s national network.

Sprint set up the affiliate arrangement in the 1990s to cut costs and build its network quickly during the telecom boom. The affiliates pay Sprint a management fee and then receive most of the revenue from subscribers.

Executives at iPCS, which has 235,000 subscribers in Nebraska, Iowa, Illinois and Michigan, said that unilateral changes Sprint PCS made in its contract cost the affiliate tens of millions of dollars and contributed to its bankruptcy filing Sunday.