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Sprint To Shut Down Nextel iDEN Network Next Year

Posted by Soulskill on from the take-it-out-to-the-barn dept.

Stephenmg writes "Sprint will be shutting down their iDEN network from its merger with Nextel and will migrate users to Push to Talk over CDMA. It will then use the 800mhz frequency to build out its LTE network. From the article: 'Sprint has been decommissioning iDEN base stations as part of its methodical transition to Network Vision, a flexible infrastructure intended to accommodate both the carrier's 3G CDMA technology and its emerging 4G LTE system. About one-third of the iDEN radios are scheduled to be removed by the end of this year. The iDEN system only offers downstream speeds below 100K bps (bits per second), a trickle compared with the multiple megabits per second available from LTE and from WiMax, Sprint's current 4G technology, which is provided by Clearwire. One major benefit to Sprint from shutting down iDEN will be the ability to reuse its 800MHz frequencies for the Sprint LTE network, which a U.S. Federal Communications Commission ruling last week made possible. The LTE service is scheduled to launch in the middle of this year on another spectrum band and later expand to 800MHz.'"

7 of 53 comments (clear)

  1. Middle of this year? by QuantumRiff · · Score: 4, Insightful

    So Friday? two weeks? Or maybe the "middle of the second half?"

    You would think, if it was coming out soon, you would hear more about it..

    --

    What are we going to do tonight Brain?
    1. Re:Middle of this year? by amiga3D · · Score: 5, Interesting

      I heard about it. I used to be a Boost Mobile customer with a GSM phone that ran off of Nextel towers. I got a message they were going to be working on the towers and that I needed to get a CDMA phone. Sure enough a few weeks later my service dropped in the dirt. I didn't mind buying a new phone the old one was 3 years old and my wife wanted a smart phone. I purchased a new phone and walla! still no service. I drove all over the neighborhood and still not one damn bar. It worked great everywhere around town but not in my house where my wife makes 90 percent of her calls. She's now the proud owner of a new AT&T Samsung android type smartphone. They upgraded me right off their network. It was nice while it lasted.

    2. Re:Middle of this year? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Informative

      In the article it says as early as June 2013, but I guess nobody read it.. :)

    3. Re:Middle of this year? by satsuke · · Score: 5, Informative

      Small point of clarification here -- Nextel never used GSM, they have only ever used iden. iden had sim cards like GSM and the backend / MSC "felt" like GSM, but the air interface -- the shoveling of bits across the air between tower and handset, have always been IDEN.

      It's also worth pointing out that nextel used what is called the SMR band .. ~800mhz. This frequency typically propagates further than the 1900mhz the rest of Sprint is operating on, so it is entirely possible for the new phone tower in the same location wouldn't reach you, while an iden at 800mhz would.

    4. Re:Middle of this year? by Stephenmg · · Score: 4, Informative

      I have already seen a few iDEN towers go offline. They are sending a letter to iDEN customers June 1, 2012 telling them to move to CDMA phones (I have one and it works great, much better PTT). The iDEN network will cease to exist as early as June 30, 2013. As June 30, 2013 approaches, customers will get even more notifications. http://www.androidcentral.com/sprint-set-shut-down-its-iden-network-early-next-summer

  2. Misty water-colored memories... by jtownatpunk.net · · Score: 4, Interesting

    This takes me back. My first data-capable phone was a Motorola on Nextel's network. It was also my first "nationwide" phone where all of my services were included in my plan no matter where I was. If I got a signal, I was on my home network. No more roaming! And I had data service at a blazing 9600 bits per second thru the proprietary serial cable. I'm trying to remember if I needed my own dialup ISP to get the Jornada 690 online or if that was included in Nextel's data service. Can't remember. It was 12 years ago.

    I'm a little surprised there are still iDEN phones in the wild.

  3. Good riddance by subreality · · Score: 4, Funny

    I cannot tell you how many times I've had conversations that went like: "Whatever you do, do ... push the red button!" / "Confirming, you want me to push the red button?" / "I c... hear what ... SQUAWK red button!" / "OK, so are you saying not to push it?" / (dead air) / "Hello?"

    I don't know if it was a technology problem with iDEN (how hard could it be to get a simple TDMA system right?) or if Nextel just woefully underdeployed cells, but a decade ago they definitely set the standard for how much a network could suck and still somehow attract business customers.

    I'm pretty sure the other providers managed to add in comfort noise which you could hear cut out whenever a packet got dropped. Maybe that's where iDEN screwed up?