FCC Approves Sprint-Nextel Merger

Luke writes "Sprint and Nextel received approval from the Federal Communications Commission to merge to form the number three wireless company on Wednesday. FCC commissioners gave the companies unanimous support for the merger. The companies, which announced the merger on Dec. 14, 2004, expect to finalize the merger soon."

Comments

Just like K-mart/Sears

[toddbu]

I can't believe that a great company like Nextel wants to merge with a crappy company like Sprint. It kind of reminds me when Sears merged with K-mart. The sad thing is that it's usually the weaker partner that wins out.

Technology

[coflow]

Does anyone out there know what will happen from a network technology perspective? It seems to me that Nextel's iDen "standard" is entirely incompatible with Sprint. Will Spring just send Nextel customers new Sprint units? Then what happens to Push to Talk?

Re:Technology

[LinuxHam]

Nextel has to switch technologies anyways as they are being removed from their current freq

Which is an important point here missed by many. Nextel, in effort to offer to step out of the way of emergency services was granted back in February the right to exchange the crappy frequencies they built their business on for awesome new ones for half off. Saved billions in the process.

1. Buy up radio licenses from trucking companies operating in 800MHz all over the country.
2. Build a cellular network with those frequencies geared towards business (i.e. markup city)
3. Pound the emegency service radios until they beg the FCC to do something.
4. Exchange the crappy, life-threatening frequencies for shiny new ones at fire sale prices.

Maybe we'll get some interesting new services on those frequencies. Crap, I forgot "profit" somewhere in there.

"Nextel, the #1 preferred carrier for delivery boys, tow truck drivers and construction workers in all 50 states. 51 if you count Canada."

The most important question

[SetupWeasel]

What will the NASCAR championship be called now?

Will things get better?

[interstellar_donkey]

I'm a Sprint customer right now, and I can honestly say Sprint sucks. Granted, everyone has horror stories about any one particular wireless provider (none are perfect), but the issues I've had with Sprint have been insane.

It's not so much the service itself (which is not great, I still get dropped calls from time to time, but it's acceptable). It's their crummy customer service and problem resolution system. They disconnected my service 'accidentally', claiming I hadn't paid my bill when I had, despite the fact their customer service reps told me their computers showed a credit on my account followed by a "I don't understand why this happened. Don't worry, we'll fix it. Your service will be on within four hours." Four hours would pass, no service, I'd call again, same response with a "oh, this time it will be different". This lasted 3 ½ days. To make matters worse, every time I'd call their "customer care" number and punch in my phone number, they'd bump me to their collections department, where I'd wait on hold before getting to speak with somebody who would insist I hadn't paid my bill until I convinced them to look at their computer, then transfer me back into the queue for their regular customer service. To make matters worse, about one out of every three calls I made connected me with such a thick accent I couldn't understand them, and they had real trouble understanding me.

There's a lot more; this is just the problem I've had in the last week. I'm stuck in this contract with them for another 11 months and to date fully expect to ditch them as soon as my contract is up.

So my question is this: with Nextel, can I expect things to get any better?