Sprint To Keep Nextel, 'Rejuvinate' iDEN Credit crunch means they'll have to make the best of it... Sprint's acquisition of Nextel was one of the worst telecom decisions in recent years, with the merger offering consumers little more than an endless stream of customer support headaches. It was also a financial disaster for Sprint, Nextel's value declining from $35 billion when acquired in 2005, to less than $5 billion today. Originally, Sprint had hinted that they'd be offloading the acquisition, but tight credit markets mean Sprint will probably hold on to Nextel for now, and says they're going to work hard to " rejuvinate" the iDen business.
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  pnh102Reptiles Are Cuddly And PrettyPremium
join:2002-05-02
Mount Airy, MD | Deja Vu This is starting to look a lot like the Excite@Home merger. You had a crappy company buy out a good one and ruin both in the process.
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"At the moment of conception." | |
|  | | | Re: Deja Vu yea if they are going to rejuvenate nextel they have a lot of work to do.I loved nextel when i had it until sprint bought them.I don't know what they did but less than 2 weeks after the buyout it would not work around here to be honest it sucks ass now | |
| | | | I don't see how a company worth 5 million is going to fix the mess they made out of nextel.I just don't see it I think they will eventually sell out they don't have the money to get nextel back to anywhere close to the quality of service it had before the buyout | |
| | |  Smile__Premium
join:2008-10-10
New Freedom, PA | Re: Deja Vu Nextel is worth 5 billion.. not Sprint... | |
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|  tc1uscg
join:2005-03-09
Saint Clair Shores, MI | said by pnh102:This is starting to look a lot like the Excite@Home merger. You had a crappy company buy out a good one and ruin both in the process. psst.. your wrong. Nexthell was already dying off. Why do you think Don-a-ho sold it off and his employees down the river and ran to the nearest cave? The company was neart bankrupt anyway. Sprint should have move all it's customers to CDMA and shut it down with 18 months of the "merger". With Qchat, there is no need for iden and you can get ring tones that sound like the "chirp". The BIGGEST mistake Sprint made is just not killing it off long ago. | |
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 antwanpBeyond FM, Beyond AM, XM Satellite RadioPremium
join:2002-05-14
Cedar Hill, TX | iDEN stinks... Weren't they planning to scrap the iDEN networks anyway? (or maybe it was planned to be scrapped by the FCC, I don't remember). The future seems to be WiMax and LTE anyway. The bandwidth should be used in better ways.
-Antwan L.
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The Perils of Living in 3-D: »www.antwanpayne.com | |
| |  TJ_in_IL
join:2006-06-10
Winthrop Harbor, IL
 ·Comcast
| Re: iDEN stinks... If I remember correctly, they whole iDen network was going to be taken and handed over to the homeland security group.
This was in response to fill the need for unified communications between agencies, as witnessed during 9/11. Nextel already had in place the emergency priority network feature, that during times of emergencies, they will shut down any non-emergency registered accounts on their system, in order to prioritize emergency communications. The only reason I know this is because I have such an account.
TJ | |
| | | | said by antwanp:Weren't they planning to scrap the iDEN networks anyway? (or maybe it was planned to be scrapped by the FCC, I don't remember). The future seems to be WiMax and LTE anyway. The bandwidth should be used in better ways. -Antwan L. Nobody was planning on scrapping iDEN except for long run out of town former CEO Gary Foresee. They realized two things very quickly; QChat (what is now known as Nextel DirectConnect on Sprint) would not be ready or widely available for years (it only became available earlier this year), and that it was going to be a tough sell driving a perfectly happy customer on iDEN over to CDMA. They tried to do it by deteriorating the iDEN experience (stagnant handset lineup, poor network performance, poor plans, etc), and instead found out that users could indeed be driven off iDEN. Unfortunately, they usually just left Sprint entirely. To his credit, I think the new CEO Dan Hesse understands iDEN as a potential asset, he's reinvigorated the handsets (I'm certain he was the driving force behind the new iDEN BlackBerry), the i9 that's coming out, and so on. I will attest to the fact that the iDEN network is performing better now for me than it ever has under Sprint management. The plans are now equal to the CDMA side. There's some general sense that Sprint now wants our business. So I'm hopeful.
As for being a waste of bandwidth, that's a silly statement. iDEN (ESMR) doesn't have a great amount of bandwidth allotted to it as it is, and is one of the more spectral efficient technologies. It has to do more with less.
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"Don't steal. The government hates competition." | |
| | |  Sr TechPremium
join:2003-01-19
New Fairfield, CT
 ·PHONE POWER
| Re: iDEN stinks... You are correct,
When Donahue sold us off to Sprint internally we knew the systems were incompatible. The system apparently (from what we were told) had reached it's limit of being able to continue expansion of cell sites due to limitations of the systems back end. When Sprint bought Nextel it was not for the system yet it was to grab the customers migrate them to Sprint. In the mean time the Iden side was neglected enough where a customer had no choice to either leave or move over to Sprints CDMA.
There must be a reason to start fixing the system, either people are just leaving completely or not leaving the iden system. Possibly could be a plan to sell the system off completely to the Feds or some other entity. Now I had read some time back (need to find the story) when I believe Tmobile was interested in Sprint that the feds would not allow the merger unless the Nextel/Iden side was spun off. | |
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| | Iden SUCKS Oh jeeze.. Please say it's not so.. Iden is CRAP. Its the reason public safety is doing all of this rebanding. If the FCC had any balls whatsoever, they would have driven a nail into Iden and fined it and sprint out of existence. Iden is like BPL in the interference it creates. The sooner it dies, the better. | |
| | Reviews:
·Comcast
| Will it work From reading the press releases several years ago when Sprint picked up Nextel, the goal was to integrate both networks into one. Than didn't happen. Also now that they teamed up with Clearwire, they are engaged in a Wimax build out. Managing 3 separate networks would be a operational strain on any company. I believe we may see #3 removed form the list(or sold).
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"Republicans believe Democrats are wrong. Democrats believe Republicans are evil." - Charles Krauthamer | |
| | fiberguyMy views are my own.Premium
join:2005-05-20
kudos:3 | Re: Iden SUCKS said by unixwolf:Oh jeeze.. Please say it's not so.. Iden is CRAP. Really!
Crap? .. just.. crap? iDen as far as communications kicks the ass of anything else out there, when the network is running correctly, for voice and two-way.
I'm assuming you either had a nextel and had a bad experience, you read talking points and echo them, or just don't like iDEN because it doesn't handle high speed data well. (Which it doesn't - however, the call ability and two-way stability is perfectly fine for the millions of business users that relied on it for years)
So.. WHY is it crap? | |
| | |  neonhomerKK4BFNPremium
join:2004-01-27
Edgewater, FL
·RoadRunner Cable
| Re: Iden SUCKS Must be a follow the sheep type....
I love iDEN. What other network can you press a button and talk to someone NOW. I think Sprint had that new version of a Direct Connect that would work on EDGE networks, and would cross over to iDEN.
Yeah, iDEN sucks for high speed data, and their phones suck, but their instant communication capability is well worth it.
Sprint buying Nextel was the worst thing for Nextel.
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"I reject your reality and subsitute my own!" - Adam Savage, Mythbusters
"We're either gonna die or gonna fly...", Jamie Hyneman, Mythbusters
The odds of me voting Republican are about as good as LHC creating a black hole big enough to swallow the Earth! | |
| | | | | | Re: Iden SUCKS said by neonhomer:Must be a follow the sheep type.... You should respect those with the technical proficiency to point out when certain equipment is just garbage, in this case Iden base stations. I love iDEN. What other network can you press a button and talk to someone NOW. I think Sprint had that new version of a Direct Connect that would work on EDGE networks, and would cross over to iDEN. --Yea, follow the sheep.. Get a clue. Before that crappy nextel, there was SMR. People carried portable radios or had a mobile installed in the truck/car. They operated on a variety of frequencies, VHF-lo, VHF, UHF, etc. The systems were usually clean and did not interfere with each other. Yeah, iDEN sucks for high speed data, and their phones suck, but their instant communication capability is well worth it. Sprint buying Nextel was the worst thing for Nextel. | |
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| | Sprint's Thoughts.... I am in the communications group at Sprint, and wanted to offer some thoughts on the comments here. One poster referenced "an endless stream of customer support headaches" at Sprint. Yes, we had customer support problems in the past, but we have made customer service the number one focus since our new CEO arrived, and just this month Pali Research reported that we went from last to first in their survey of customer call answer time. Also, some folks have talked about the quality of the iDEN network -- last year we put a lot of money into it, and it's operating at its best-ever metrics for dropped and blocked calls and other measures of operation. Bottom line -- we looked hard at what to do with the iDEN network, and decided that it's valuable to us, it's valuable to our customers, and our best option is to keep it and enhance it further. | |
| | | | Re: Sprint's Thoughts.... Sprint's customer support is definitely better but unfortunately getting past the past will be tough for Sprint. If someone had issues 6 months ago, the perception will linger and perpetuate for years.
Sprint does need to dump iDen though. The technology has no future. Now that they have CDMA PTT up and running, they need to stop selling new iDen phones and only offer CDMA PTT phones. Then develop a plan to migrate existing iDen users to CDMA over 3-5 years and shut that network down, freeing up the spectrum for, ahem, LTE!  (in addition to WiMAX) | |
| | | | | | said by James Fisher :
I am in the communications group at Sprint, and wanted to offer some thoughts on the comments here. One poster referenced "an endless stream of customer support headaches" at Sprint. Yes, we had customer support problems in the past, but we have made customer service the number one focus since our new CEO arrived, and just this month Pali Research reported that we went from last to first in their survey of customer call answer time. Also, some folks have talked about the quality of the iDEN network -- last year we put a lot of money into it, and it's operating at its best-ever metrics for dropped and blocked calls and other measures of operation. Bottom line -- we looked hard at what to do with the iDEN network, and decided that it's valuable to us, it's valuable to our customers, and our best option is to keep it and enhance it further.
In the past huh...as recent as 2007 you were canceling customers with to many complaints. »www.informationweek.com/blog/mai···s_i.html
We don't forget this. My experience with Sprint was more than aggrevating to say the least. The CSRs were rude and would hang up on me, your billing dept was a F***ing nightmare, and there was nobody to even remotely care about your service problems. What could you possibly say to a customer that rather have a colostomy bag attached to them than have to use your rip-off service again! | |
| | |  jester121Premium
join:2003-08-09
Lake Zurich, IL | Re: Sprint's Thoughts.... Based on this post I would have cancelled you too. Clearing out the trouble makers means better service for the real customers. | |
| | | | | | Re: Sprint's Thoughts.... Yeah, actually asking for what you paid for makes you a trouble maker....you must be one of the happy sheep, in every category!
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"For duty and humanity!"
- Moe Larry and Curly (MEN IN BLACK, 1934)...These are the guys we have in Congress | |
| | | | | jester121Premium
join:2003-08-09
Lake Zurich, IL | Re: Sprint's Thoughts.... No, calling 3 or 4 times a month demanding credits and other concessions for no reason is why Sprint "fired" customers, and I applauded their efforts at the time. | |
| | | | | | | | Re: Sprint's Thoughts.... you make it sound like those people were extorting sprint for free service. There probably were a few in that category. But Most were people trying to fix convoluted billing errors that were compounding on a monthly basis. If you call the billing department for your carrier with an error, you expect it to be fixed. But what happens when they don't correct it? Do you just take it? Another thing, if you have to make repeated calls to the same idiots that messed it up in the first place, why shouldn't you be compensated for your time? This was a repeated pattern with the Sprint billing dept..
And one more thing, if Sprint can charge you a $200 or 250 fee for terminating a contract early, why can't you charge Sprint for doing the same?
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"For duty and humanity!"
- Moe Larry and Curly (MEN IN BLACK, 1934)...These are the guys we have in Congress | |
| | | | | | |  en102Canadian, eh?
join:2001-01-26
Valencia, CA | Re: Sprint's Thoughts.... said by S_engineer:And one more thing, if Sprint can charge you a $200 or 250 fee for terminating a contract early, why can't you charge Sprint for doing the same? Probably because its not part of the ToS / Agreement signed.
If Sprint doesn't fix their product... people will leave, and Sprint will go bust. I suspect Sprint's 'Xohm' may fare better, but it will depend on how it is managed. Sprint has typically been at the front of deploying new technology, just not typically successful at making a profit doing it.
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Canada = Hollywood North | |
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| | | | | | Re: Sprint's Thoughts.... Way to kick 'em when they're down. | |
| | | | | | Re: Sprint's Thoughts.... What goes around comes around! | |
| | | | | slckusrPremium
join:2003-03-17
Maumee, OH
kudos:1 Reviews:
 ·AT&T U-Verse
 ·AT&T Midwest
| Re: Sprint's Thoughts.... good, you can keep the credit mongering unpleaseable customers on another network, this gives sprint more time to devote to the good customers who understand when they talk too much they need to pay their bill. instead of blaming it on the phone company. | |
| | | | | | | | Re: Sprint's Thoughts.... Nothing wrong with my credit. It's kind of subjective to say who's a good customer too. Where do you draw the line...when you dispute a bill?
The funny thing is it will be you flipping the bill for those of us "unworthy" comsumers that have left Sprint, all 2 milliion of us!
Once you demand what you pay for, you'll find out what it means when they say power of the consumer.
You'll find this out once you become credit worthy!
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"For duty and humanity!"
- Moe Larry and Curly (MEN IN BLACK, 1934)...These are the guys we have in Congress | |
| | | | | | | Reviews:
·Armstrong Zoom ..
| Re: Sprint's Thoughts.... I have never been ahppier with Sprint. I bought out my contract of Verizon 3-4 years ago, $300 I think, because of the supposed "no dead zones" which my house is one big one. Sprint however works flawless. No, Sprint and Verizon are on the same tower and I can see it from my front porch, so it was not "You must be closer to s Sprint tower".
People come in my house with Verizon and try to make a call, I hand them a phone because it does not work.
As far as the 2 million. Growing pains? Never been happier with Sprint all the way around (except costs but all providers suck with that). I love it.
I draw the line at a customer as being someone who respects the person they are talking to. You strike me as someone who yells at the rep with the attitude of "squeaky wheel gets the grease". See ya! | |
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roveer
join:2004-01-18
Mendham, NJ | Sprint/Nextel better learn from their past From what I've been told. The summer 06 disaster (couldn't make a call on iDen & PTT sounded like donald duck) was mainly due to poor network management. They way oversold boost and watched network performance go into the toilet. They didn't maintain and expand their infrastructure and everyone suffered. Many thought it was "the merger". Maybe it was. I think it was a part of each of these things. Poor network mgmt, poor expansion, poor maintenance, overselling, poor executive stratedgy (thinking qchat would replace iden). Today the picture is clearer. iden while old is a great technology. Afterall you click the button and you talk to the person. Has anyone invented it any better? It's a simple concept. It's digital so I don't think the gov't is coming after their spectrum?
I was told Sprint was getting ready to eject nextel and that it would be sold to an overseas consortium. If they do infact keep nextel than they should make the investment (read press release), and I've also heard from my nextel rep they are investing in infrastructure, continue to upgrade the system, get the ball rolling on new handsets (read press release), and with all these things, hopefully sales will come.
I've been using Nextel PTT for 5 years and the only problem I've had with it is "poor service" (especially summer 06) and lack of modern handsets. I'm a blackberry user so getting the new 8350 will seem like a re-birth to me. Keep away from those problems and I'll continue to use Nextel plain and simple. Oversell boost again and put the network in the crapper and we may have to talk. Dan, are you listening!!!
Roveer | |
|  DaveDudeNo Fear
join:1999-09-01
New Jersey
kudos:1
·Vonage
·ViaTalk
| No 4G plan Nextel is an artifact from the 90s, which although useful cannot last forever. Why Sprint doesnt convert its entire voice business to LTE, and work on a better direct connect feature is beyond normal understanding.
The Wimax thing is on another frequency set anyway. There is no future for Nextel. | |
| | | | Re: No 4G plan said by DaveDude:Nextel is an artifact from the 90s, which although useful cannot last forever. Why Sprint doesnt convert its entire voice business to LTE, and work on a better direct connect feature is beyond normal understanding. The Wimax thing is on another frequency set anyway. There is no future for Nextel. Just because you cant' watch porno videos on the Nextel network doesn't mean it has no future. Do you mean to say that P25 and TETRA systems also have no future because they can't run data at some super-mega-awesome speed ??? Better alert the public safety community and fill them in...
The only bad thing about iDEN is that analog systems can't co-exist too close in frequency to it, which I suspect would be a problem with GSM, CDMA and LTE systems, too.
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3500/512 5.7 GHz Motorola Canopy Wireless; FoxValley.net
"Peace through superior firepower" | |
| | patcat88
join:2002-04-05
Jamaica, NY
kudos:1 | said by DaveDude:Nextel is an artifact from the 90s, which although useful cannot last forever. Why Sprint doesnt convert its entire voice business to LTE, and work on a better direct connect feature is beyond normal understanding. The Wimax thing is on another frequency set anyway. There is no future for Nextel.
5 MHZ per market and no expansion bands, there is no future. Bye bye IDEN, your dialup now. | |
| | | EPS
join:2008-02-13
Hingham, MA | Re: No 4G plan Oh! Dial-up! Maybe Earthlink should buy iDEN? | |
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| | I would say SELL SELL SELL! lol | |
| | | They kept it because they couldn't sel it This merger was a disaster from the beginning. How many customers did Sprint lose last quarter (I believe it was over 900,000). What happens now when money gets tight and people start giving up items they can't pay for anymore?
Sprint made a huge mistake buying Nextel, and couldn't keep the customers. We didn't switch from Nextel to Sprint, we switch our Nextel lines to Verizon. | |
|  joakoPremium
join:2000-09-07
/dev/null
kudos:5
·Comcast
| New Windows Mobile Phone? Does this mean there will be a more up-to-date Windows Mobile phone for the iDen network?
I spent $530 (499+tax) for an i930 phone yesterday (lost the first one). This is 2003 technology (Windows Mobile 2003).
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09:F9:11:02:9D:74:E3:5B:D8:41:56:C5:63:56:88:C0 | |
| | | Tight Credit Market As the blurb states.....credit is tight right now.
Most Nextel customers are business users and likely have a good record of paying their bills. The average account probably has more lines than competitors. If you were a business, who wouldn't want a reliable brand like this.
Sprint has dropped the ball for a few years now. I hope they follow through and beef up this asset. | |
|  kpfx
join:2005-10-28
San Antonio, TX
·RoadRunner Cable
| I miss the times when Sprint was the best Oh come on Sprint! Just spin off the fledging Nextel network and let it eather fly and heal itself or crash and burn. You've got enough problems dealing with your messed up house...
It's not bringing anything new to the table and Verizon is already starting to attack its market share of push-to-talk phones. | |
| | | its good news I am glad they are expanding it ... nextel is still a great service. Personally, along with my other friends who have all used sprint/verizon/nextel all agree that nextel does have the best call quality (when it works  ) and it has the most clear and crisp sound to voices.. cmda just sounds a little washed out compared to nextel phones so to me, its the best service out there.. If only they can achieve more network coverage.. or even roll out some serious broadband for nextel.. it won't go anywhere | |
| | | BLAH The best thing Sprint did was to purchase Nextel. The worst thing they did was fuck it up.
iDEN is great at what it does.
They need to stop making pure iDEN phones. Use iDEN for what it does best - PTT, and leave the data to EVDO (ic902). Voice... it's a toss up, every protocol can do voice well. That is something they can do RIGHT NOW and would make everyone happy (unless there is no Sprint coverage in your area... which I believe accounts for 13M people.
Once they solve the problems with QChat, stop making the hybrid phones and run solely rev A.
It's great that iDEN is still the best PTT almost 15 years after inception, however, its age shows when doing anything else. | |
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