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Nextel Broadband: Take Two?
Atryn writes "Many of you may recall the Nextel broadband trial of Flarion's Flash-OFDM Technology in Raleigh, N.C. last year. They have since shut down that trial. Now, Nextel has announced a new broadband trial of UMTS TD-CDMA in Washington, D.C. for this fall. Other coverage here and company press releases from Nextel and IP Wireless."
...meanwhile, Allstream (AT&T) and Fido have had commercial 2.5MHz CDMA broadband in place in this city for over a year.
FIRST ARTICLE:
Nextel Commits to TD-CDMA Trial
By Susan Rush
June 29, 2005
NEWS@2 DIRECT
Nextel Communications is the latest carrier to test the waters of UMTS TD-CDMA technology. The carrier plans to launch a trial using IPWireless' equipment in Washington, D.C. and surrounding areas in during the third quarter.
Nextel will use the trial to test network performance, customer satisfaction and digital convergence capabilities, among other things. The trial, which will last a minimum of six months, will be conducted in Nextel's 2.5 GHz spectrum.
"The upcoming trial in the Washington, D.C. area is an example of our commitment to evaluate the best available broadband options..." says Nextel Chief Technology Officer Barry West.
Select customers in Washington, D.C.; Arlington, Alexandria and Reston Va.; and Bethesda, Md. will participate in the trial. Nextel says it has no plans to make a service based on the technology commercially available at this time.
IPWireless reports Nextel is one of roughly 30 trial or deployments of UMTS TDD around the world.
Earlier this month, T-Mobile Czech Republic said it plans to commercially launch a wireless broadband network using IPWireless' UMTS TDD technology. The network will be up and running in Prague by year's end. T-Mobile Czech Republic's goal is to expand its coverage nationwide by mid-2006, the company said at the time of the announcement.
In March, Orange announced a TD-CDMA trial with its enterprise customers in France using IPWireless' UMTS TDD equipment.
Separately, Nextel announced it has enhanced its network in several Georgia counties to enable the delivery of its cellular, Direct Connect digital walkie-talkie services, Group Connect and wireless data services including text messaging, mobile e-mail and Web access.
The upgrade will enable these services to be offered in Athens, Barrow, Carroll, Clayton, Cobb, Coweta, Douglas, Hall, Heard, Henry, Pickens and White counties.
Nextel first began offering service in Georgia 10 years ago.
SECOND ARTICLE:
Nextel Moves Forward With New Broadband Wireless Trial
Posted: 06/29
From: TechDirt
Nextel got a lot of attention last year when they announced their Raleigh-Durham broadband wireless trial, using FLASH-OFDM technology from Flarion. The offering was reasonably priced (no, seriously) and offered high speed, mobile broadband access all over the region. In fact, there were plenty of rumors that Nextel was all set to announce Flarion's technology would be the basis of their next generation network. Then, along came the Sprint merger, along with Sprint's own plans to offer EV-DO broadband wireless technology. Still, many people thought that the combined Sprint-Nextel (officially named: Sprint) might offer two levels of service: an EV-DO offering focused mainly on mobile phones, and another offering aimed at DSL replacement. The combined company would most likely have enough spectrum to handle both types of offerings, and given Nextel's trials with Flarion, it seemed like it might be the technology they would use. Then, without much warning, Nextel shut down the Flarion trials, despite saying it had been a tremendous success. Almost everyone who tried it said they loved the service, and the new assumption was that Nextel figured they would just go with EV-DO once the merger was complete. Still, Nextel is famous for being incredibly thorough in trials that they do, and while the Flarion trial got all the publicity, they were still testing out plenty of other technologies in the lab (including EV-DO, pre-WiMax equipment, and UMTS-TDD). With that background, some may still find it surprising that, just ahead of the merger deal, Nextel is announcing trials with IP Wireless for UMTS-TDD technology in Washington DC. Unlike the Raleigh-Durham trials, this won't be entirely open to the public -- just to certain select Nextel customers. However, it's a pretty big win for IP Wireless, who seems to be on a roll, lately.
Sorry, forgot this. It's the same on both sites, so yeah.
Press Release
Nextel to Launch Wireless Broadband Trial on 2.5 GHz in Washington, D.C. Area with IPWireless; Trial will offer a range of wireless interactive multimedia and wireless broadband services using IPWireless' UMTS TD-CDMA solution
RESTON, Va. & SAN BRUNO, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--June 29, 2005--Nextel Communications Inc. (NASDAQ:NXTL) will deploy a wireless broadband trial based on UMTS TD-CDMA technology from IPWireless, the companies announced today. The field trial will begin during the third quarter in Washington, D.C.; Arlington, Va.; Alexandria, Va.; Reston, Va. and Bethesda, Md.
"The upcoming trial in the Washington, D.C. area is an example of our commitment to evaluate the best available broadband options in order to ultimately deliver cutting-edge services for our customers," said Barry West, chief technology officer at Nextel. "Nextel has conducted lab testing of the IPWireless technology, and this trial will allow us to test the performance and economics offered by the TD-CDMA technology in our 2.5 GHz spectrum."
The trial will allow Nextel to test a range of subscriber services, including broadband access for laptops, desktops or PDAs, backhaul for enterprise campus and a wide array of Wireless Interactive Multimedia Services such as video streaming, online gaming, document collaboration and video conferencing. The trial will allow Nextel to develop and test digital convergence concepts that target business users, consumers, public safety agencies, universities and multimedia content partners.
During the upcoming field trial, Nextel will evaluate network performance and customer satisfaction under real-world conditions. The trial is scheduled to run for a minimum of six months and is not expected to have a material impact on Nextel's financial results in 2005. The trial will be offered only to select Nextel customers and is not expected to be offered commercially to the general public at this time.
About Nextel
Nextel Communications, a FORTUNE 200 company based in Reston, Va., is a leading provider of fully integrated wireless communications services and has built the largest guaranteed all-digital wireless network in the country covering thousands of communities across the United States. Today 95 percent of FORTUNE 500(R) companies are Nextel customers. Nextel and Nextel Partners, Inc. currently serve 297 of the top 300 U.S. markets where approximately 263 million people live or work.
About IPWireless
IPWireless develops advanced standards-based mobile broadband technology. The company's UMTS TD-CDMA technology has emerged as a leading global standard for wireless broadband. TD-CDMA allows operators to offer a spectrum of completely mobile, portable, or stationary end-to-end packet-based services with unmatched economics and true broadband performance. TD-CDMA has the highest average sector capacity, the strongest cell edge performance, and the lowest cost per megabit of any standards-based mobile technology available today, and is deployed by leading operators around the world including announced initiatives with T-Mobile, Orange, Nextel, and PCCW. The IPWireless Partner Program and chipsets allow device manufacturers and infrastructure vendors to very quickly bring innovative new TD-CDMA solutions to market. For more information, visit the company's Web site at www.ipwireless.com.
I subscribed to this service when it was available in the Raleigh area. It was actually quite speedy, when in the right place. The service was very touchy to location, I could barely get any service in my aparment, because of all the trees near-by. However, in RTP, the service was excellent.
My worst experience in the whole trial was when they screwed up my billing.
Nextel Flarion UTMS W-CDMA TD-SCMA What's TD-CDMA then?
Come play Moral Decay!