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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.
"Nextel. Done."
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?