said by mindfrost82 :

I just love it when people say Sprint ruined Nextel. Nextel was at or near capacity when the merger happened. Once that happens, there's nowhere for the carrier to go except backwards. They were forced to change some of their technology due to the FCC and that would have been enough to put them under.

Sure the merger was horrible and didn't go smoothly at all, but Sprint didn't ruin Nextel, Nextel ruined Nextel before the merger even happened. Nextel saw it coming and they wanted to get out, that's why the started talking about mergers.