The time we’ve been waiting for, the death of Nextel/iDen, is getting closer. A new announcement on nextelnetwork.sprint.com foretells of changes being made to Nextel’s network infrastructure in 2012. Most importantly, Sprint is beginning the process of evaluating the number of and dismantling iDen-specific towers across the country. The reason given by Sprint is simple “cost savings”, though we’d certainly think the late-2013 EOL time frame...
Let’s be honest with each other for a minute. The only — yes, the only — reason anyone still cares about iDen is because of Push-to-Talk. And even then, the number of people, nationally speaking, that use the feature is relatively tiny all things considered. Unsurprisingly Sprint has been looking to get away from the grossly outdated 2G network for a couple of years now, though had to make sure the transition for legacy PTT users was as seamless as...
If Sprint announcing the end of the road for Nextel and it’s archaic iDen network weren’t clear enough, perhaps the latest figures announced by the carrier itself will get the point across. For all intents and purposes, iDen is dying. How else would you describe a nearly 10% drop in post-paid subscribers in one quarter. For example: Sprint reported that they had 5,617,000 post-paid (Nextel) iDEN subscribers at the end of Q1 2011 (-424,000). On the BoostMobile...
Unless you’re a hardcore construction worker or other type of hard, manual laborer, you probably feel the same way about Nextel as we do, and look down on the carrier and accompanying hardware as outdated, clunky, and ugly. Over the last year, parent company, Sprint, has been putting as much company resources into building out their 4G WiMax network as possible, leaving little for innovative Nextel/iDen features. Combine that with various statements made by Sprint...
To those in the tech world, one of the worst acquisitions ever to occur was that of Sprint and Nextel. Nextel was just so…old. The iDen network is a joke. The only reason it’s still here is because of it’s walkie-talkie feature. And even that isn’t unique to just iDen phones anymore. Virtually every major carrier now has their own push-to-talk solution. Further watering down iDen’s usefulness is the simple fact that it pales in comparison...
