I hear that all the handsets are going to a common standard. Sprint/Nextel units will essentially be on a 3rd standard that is basically VOIP. Don’t know the details beyond that. NEXTEL may survive as a brand, but it doesn’t look likely.
We dumped nextel about a year back. Reception was terrible. We we’re spending half of out time trying to communicate.
Places where reception was always good, suddenly turned terrible. These are spots right on the outside of a large city, on the main interstate hwy.
Our phone bill is about half of what it was, and reception is vastly better.
Then again if Deutsche Telekom buys Sprint they may both become T-Mobile. But then that’s not going to happen. Right?
http://www.reuters.com/article/rbssTechMediaTelecomNews/idUSBAT00221520080505
H.323, the first VoIP standard owes a lot to GSM, the European cell phone standard. In fact, the GSM codec is one of those described in the standard. It’s all packet voice.
There may be something to be said for a SIP handset for cell phones but the carriers wouldn’t like it. They make good money off of text messaging now. Billing would be an issue for them and security would be an issue for the rest of us.
Nextel’s real problem is their spectrum. they’re in the 900 mhz band, close to police and fire. Most providers use 800, 1800 or 1900 mhz. The government is trying to flog the 700 mhz spectrum but since it has over two and a half times less bandwidth for data than the guys operating at 1900 mhz the carriers really aren’t that enthusiastic. Longer wavelength transmissions also don’t reflect as well as shorter wavelengths, resulting in Nextel’s infamous dead zones. 700 mhz will be worse.