Saleh said that Sprint has been selling the Nextel services
less aggressively during its rebanding in the 800 MHz frequencies, which is now almost complete. Higher credit requirements
coupled with deactivations of existing customers have led to a huge shift in Sprint’s customer base from the iDEN to
the CDMA platform. iDEN customers accounted for 44% of Sprint’s subscribers in the third quarter of 2006; at the end
of the last quarter, iDEN customers had fallen to 35% of overall subscribers. As rebanding is completed and iDEN call quality
has improved, Saleh said, Sprint expects that trend to reverse, but the impact will continue to effect Sprint’s net
adds in the fourth quarter.
“The most pressing care issues are now behind us,”
Saleh said. “Having said that, there is still more work to do to further improve the customer service and the end-to-end
customer experience.”
Dave's take:
Less aggressively huh? How about abandoning. Like rats trying
to leave a sinking ship. All of these executives are employed by SPRINT and have never known anything about NEXTEL before
the merger than they were getting their butts kicked in the Government and corporate sectors by NEXTEL. Now that they (executives
within SPRINT) OWN NEXTEL they are taking revenge. NEXTEL has always been superior to SPRINT on voice and it burns them. NEXTEL
has always been a masculine, rugged, secure system coveted by those who don't care about toys and tunes.
The execs at SPRINT have embarqed on an active campaign to market
the SPRINT label exclusively (even in NASCAR). Hence leading the public to believe that NEXTEL is dead.
Here is an article from 18MAR2002
WASHINGTON--The Federal Communications Commission on Thursday
took the first step in what eventually could mean a complete restructuring of the 800 MHz band.
"Most parties who have come in believe redoing the band is necessary,"
said Thomas J. Sugrue, chief of the FCC's Wireless Telecommunications Bureau.
A restructuring of the 800 MHz band appears necessary because
public-safety operations--which are interwoven among other users--are experiencing dead spots because of interference caused
by Nextel Communications Inc. and cellular A-block systems, the FCC said
Dave's take:
Verizon can shove it! Verizon wireless went out to as many police
and fire stations using 800 mhz motorola radio systems (the most prevelant) and filed FCC complaints on behalf of those departments
based solely on the "tick-tick-tick" that the IDEN system "interfered" with emergency communications.
Remember Janet Jackson's boob popping out? The FCC logged over
2500 "complaints" from that super bowl broadcast. The FCC levied significant fines and stepped up its moral authority upon
the communications industry as a whole. Commissioner Powell used a broad stroke and a heavy hand to spank anyone who has a
complaint filed against them. It was later determined and very quietly mentioned in the news that the large number of complaints
that the super bowl came from just a little over 40 individual complaintants.
The FCC complaints from the different agencies claiming "intereference"
from NEXTEL was driven solely by a vindictive cellular company (VERIZON) upset because the FCC wouldn't allow them to buy
into the 800 MHZ band for expansion. Primarily because the band was near full with users. Are the FCC complaints legitimate?
Not really. If the FCC actually went to the site claiming interference they would find that a vast majority were unfounded
and based on a handset "ticking" next to an unshielded computer speaker.
Are we going to lose IDEN soon? NO!
Here is a public notice to this question in an open letter to
NEXTEL dealers in NOV 2007.
"The spectrum reconfiguration plan that we
agreed to several years ago called for Sprint to give up spectrum in the bottom and middle of the 800 MHz band and to pay
for relocation of more than 2,000 public safety agencies and other users to new spectrum. In exchange, Sprint would receive
spectrum vacated by public safety operators at the top of the 800 MHz band and additional spectrum in the 1.9 GHz band.
The resulting arrangement would separate
public safety from Sprint’s iDEN-based services to prevent unintended interference to public safety radio transmissions.
On Sept. 11 of this year, however, the FCC
unilaterally and signifi cantly altered the terms of the plan, which would force Sprint to give up spectrum in June 2008 –
months or even years before the safety agencies are ready to relinquish their frequencies. Since those agencies will still
be using their current channels, the channels won’t be vacated for us to use.
The fact is that the 800 MHz reconfi guration
is making good progress and gaining momentum and at the same time our iDEN network is operating at best-ever performance levels.
This decision by the FCC will slow rather than expedite the 800 MHz band reconfi guration process while harming public safety
and our customers who rely on the iDEN network.
While we continue to discuss the decision with the
FCC and other public policy influencers to persuade the FCC to
reverse or modify its decision, the company
has also fi led an appeal in the U.S. Court of Appeals seeking to have the FCC’s September action overturned.
The dispute will not affect our plans to revitalize
the Nextel Direct Connect push-to-talk product. In fact, on Friday we launched the i335, our first new iDEN device to hit
the market in more than a year, and we have more new devices on the way. We are committed to serving and keeping our important
base of Nextel Direct Connect users.
As acting CEO Paul Saleh has said on numerous occasions,
this is one of our key differentiators."
Dave's take:
More units to come? Keeping our base of users? Looks to me that 2008 it worry free from
IDEN death. Maybe Oct of 2009 is a safe bet.
Until the next time.
