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Sprint Nextel (S, Fortune 500) said Tuesday that it plans to shut down the Nextel network as early as June 30, 2013. Sprint has long talked about its intention to wind down Nextel, but this is the first time it has offered up a precise end date.
My personal favorite:
Virtually all of the the merger's value has now been written off.
The only people I still see with Nextel's are the Landscapers. We had around 200 village wide at one time. Everyone had one. Fire admin, inspectors, specialty team leaders, and each rig. The Police were the same, Public works and Village supervisors, public works empolyees. Even the village officals.It was so many the public works sidelined their conventional UHF repeater and used nextel fleet calling. We had an agreement for a special rate because we leased space on our water towers for their sites. Now they fell out of grace and everyone has a nice pretty smart phone on verizon but the FD who have the Barrage v860 with the PTT that sucks. Pretty much everyone on my shift has everyone elses personal phone number stored and just calls them direct.
I used to have Mextel it was great at the time .. I lived in a big ass two story house and when the wife wanted me while I was in the basement playing with radios she could Direct connect to run her up something.
FireCpt809 wrote:Im sure Sprint will do something with all that bandwith.
This is correct. Remember rebanding (which still hasn't fully completed even though it was supposed to be done by/around 2004?)
NexTel/Sprint gains continuous spectrum in the upper-end of the 800Mhz public safety, etc band. What goes great with continuous spectrum? CDMA systems, 4G... whatever. Their long term plan has clearly been to dump iDen and use the new continuous spectrum gained to advance their own network. Buying NexTel in the first place seemed foolish since the two company's system designs were totally different, and maybe the purchase was still incredibly stupid seeing as how in the end all they got from it was some bandwidth.
I just cancelled my Nextel service which I had since 2000. There used to be 75 people on our group. I was the last one. My only question is this. Sprint wants to use the 800 band for their CDMA service. But in reality, Nextel was a SMR service provider, & used the 850-870 band. They happened to offer "phone patch" services so their SMR PTT customers could make phone calls if necessary, but their bread & butter was PTT. Will Sprint whose prime service as a CDMA PCS cell phone provider be authorized to use the 850-870 band to expand their coverage? Has the FCC approved this? GARY N4KVE.
The FCC approved the use of 800 MHz spectrum to provide advanced 3G and 4G services last week. This paves the way for Sprint to offer LTE services on the same spectrum that houses its iDEN network currently. Before the FCC voted to remove the restrictions on the 800 MHz band, the spectrum could be used only for operating 2G services.
Yep, and as I recall, one of the major conditions of the FCC originally granting FleetCall/Nextel the licenses was specifically that they could not be used for or converted to PCS. It's really not shocking that they've disregarded their own precedent, they've made it clear that their rules are only rules when they say they are, and those with the best lawyer or lobbyist will often get their way if the stick they swing is big enough.
escomm wrote:Yep, and as I recall, one of the major conditions of the FCC originally granting FleetCall/Nextel the licenses was specifically that they could not be used for or converted to PCS. It's really not shocking that they've disregarded their own precedent, they've made it clear that their rules are only rules when they say they are, and those with the best lawyer or lobbyist will often get their way if the stick they swing is big enough.
You mean like the FCC issuing SDARS licenses to two separate companies, XM and Sirius and allowing them to illegally merge?
Consider the FCC for a moment...
They are neither a law making or reguatory agency, and even their rules are subject to question as to legality.
The FCC levies fines, but how?
They are not a law enforcement agency, nor are they a court, but they write rules as if law, enforce laws they are not entitled to enforce or regulate, and have no justice system power or authority to act as one, BUT THEY DO.
They are not empowered to levy fines, it is not in their field of authority, it is by usurpation that they do.
The FCC auctions spectrum it does not own, as the people are the true owners, just don't tell the FCC that fact.
The FCC was created to take power where none was graned by the declaration, the fed was imbued with limited and enumerated authority, not any more, it is now unlimited in breadth and scope.
So, with even a history of Nextel not signing paperwork, filing said papers/licenses in a timely manner, and the fact that an SMR suddenly became a cellular carrier overnight with the stroke of a pen
amazes me. Nextel had to offer PTT in order to 'act' as a cellular provider as being licensed as an SMR, there were no cell phones on SMR trunking bands, but Nextel $$ got the FCC to look the other way and gave them just what they wanted...misfiled paperwork and all.
It's okay, do what you want as long as you keep us fed, we'll focus on the little guys and terrorize them instead.
FCC: Schoolyard bully.
Oh look, a significant portion of SMR has just been refarmed to cellular...
This was really nothing more than a spectrum grab by Sprint. I'm quite sure when the merged (bought) Nextel they never intended to keep operating ESMR or any real variant of PTT service. Sprint needed 800 MHz spectrum and there was none available. Now they have several MHz of contiguous spectrum in 800 MHz with a nationwide license, and have received authorization to do with it what they please.
that's why I always referred to the "Concensus Plan" as the SCAM plan, because in the end, that is what it was a Steely Dan ROYAL SCAM to grab 800MHz spectrum.
The views here are my own and do not represent those of anyone else or the company, the boss, his wife, his dog or distant relatives.
It wasn't so long ago that I was checking out a Motorola Titanium. Although I no longer use iDen, I thought this might be a good device to get used for off network Direct Talk. I suppose the folks on SouthernLINC might have a little demand for this, but they have their own i867. At first I thought they might be the same phone, but upon closer inspection it looks like the i867 has no physical keypad, but the Titanium does. The Titanium does specifically list MOTO TALK, but that is not listed for the i867!
Jim1348 wrote: I thought this might be a good device to get used for off network Direct Talk. The Titanium does specifically list MOTO TALK, but that is not listed for the i867!
Numerous times in the past I have seen where a Nextel phone will have Direct Talk, & a similar model made for Boost, which is the prepaid arm of Nextel will not have Direct Talk. However, the hardware is in the phone to do Direct Talk, it's just not activated. A quick unlock will then allow Direct Talk to work. Howard's Forums is a great place to find out which models will do this. GARY N4KVE
I work security as my day job; like many, we use Nextel and actually, the other night picking up some overtime, instead of the normal Nextel was Sprint's Nextel Replacement thats mentioned in the Nextel shutdown website. Its a Kyrocera "DuraMax" phone, and the phone itself was awesome; its rugged and has a giant PTT button. Unfortuantly, I had no other person to try the PTT with and even then, there was a note about "You can't Direct Connect yet! Phone calls only!" so I guess its not turned on yet.
I know Nextel's PTT was awesome, but if the Sprint "Direct Connect" just works sligtly faster than a Verizon PTT phone, it might be bearable lol.
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Sprint plans to use the freed-up spectrum from scrapping its "2G" Nextel network to launch a 4G-LTE network. It hopes former Nextel customers will begin to use Sprint's new "Direct Connect" technology, which enables push-to-talk capabilities on Sprint's network.
Though the company has already stopped selling Nextel phones for consumers, it will discontinue them across the board over the next few months.