Sprint giving up on QChat after short, year long honeymoon.

If you’re a contractor, dispatcher, or some other typical “business user”, chances are you use or at least have seen Nextel/Sprint Nextel push-to-talk phones out and about your neck of the woods, Whether the phones were powered by Nextel’s iDen or Sprint’s “QChat” doesn’t matter as they were essentially the same technology. Now some may have had a hard time deciphering between the two networks and technologies not wanting to pick the inferior network. Such pondering will no longer be required as Sprint is removing one of those choices. After only one year on the market, Sprint is axing their supposed iDen replacement. Old phones with the feature will still be supported. Old phones however will leave the factory void of any QChat feature or support form here on out.

To this day, Sprint has neglected to reveal any actual iDen and/or QChat subscriber numbers so it’s hard to say exactly how many people will be affected. It’s worth noting however that Sprint does mention that Nextel iDen customers are the largest chunk of their push-to-talk user base. Draw your own conclusions.

In a way this is good for Sprint. They’re still stuck in a deep, black hole of suck and quarterly results show that. These days it’s all about the consumer in the mobile sphere with higher end feature phones and smartphones taking the cake. Such phones simply aren’t available anywhere on Nextel though Sprint does have a few gems. Ultimately, consolidating and getting rid of excess baggage is the best thing Sprint can do in their trek for black ink. So long QChat, we barely knew you.

Cellular-News > AP

{Image Source}