Thread: Then there were three - Sprint and Nextel Merge

It's official. After just a few days of rumors, Sprint PCS has announced that they are buying Nextel. This is sure to affect anyone who has Sprint PCS and especially anyone who has Nextel.

Some thoughts -

Nextel is famous for their push-to-talk feature which has made them a major player in the buisiness wireless market. Sprint and Verizion also have offered push-to-talk, but their plans are extra and only on certain phones. Nextel also has free incoming calls, which is a great value. It would be great to see Sprint pick up on these features on their plans. I think it's likely that push to talk will be expanded, but the free incoming calls plans may be limited to legacy


Sprint, for it's part, has an ecellent network. 1.9 ghz cdma 3G. It's the most advanced and fastest nationwide network, and their coverage is pretty good, better than Nextel in many places, though not always as good Verizion or Cingular. Still, for wireless data nationwide, it's hard to beat SprintPCS. Speeds up to 300kbps, compaired to about 55 on Nextel. They also have some of the best phones (I have a Treo-650. It rocks). Plus, Sprint offers features like MobiTV and SprntTV, which let you watch television on your phone.


The downside: Unlike Cingular and AT&T, which had similar network technology, enabling good cross-compatabiltity of their phones, Sprint and Nextel do not. Sprint uses 1.9 ghz CDMA2.0, and Nextel uses something called iDEN, a propriotary network technology which is NOT compatable with CDMA, GSM or other off-the-shelf technology.


This means, of course, eventually some people are probably gona need to buy new phones. In the short run, they'll probably operate both systems, and it's possible we'll see some dual-mode phones. But long term, it's redundant and it's likely one of the network protocalls is going to be retired from new phones, and possibly eventually deactivated. In my opinion it's probably going to be the Nextel/iDen system that will be phased out.

So, if you're looking for a new phone, I would not suggest buying a Nextel one, as the technology may have a limited life and it is likely the same plan will be avaliable from SprintPCS/Nextel very shortly.

On the bright side, if you have Nextel, you are likely to see a lot more people who you can direct-connect to. It's possible not all sprint phones will support this right away, but many could be enabled for direct connect with a simple firmware upgrate.


-Steve

KB1IPD