Welcome to Wireless Advisor! The Direct Connect service will not be directly discontinued. Nextel's iDen Network will be shut down sometime in 2013. The Direct Connect feature will be available on Sprint's CDMA network before 2013. You will be able to buy a "direct connect" enabled phone from Sprint sometime this year that utilizes the new PTT network.
Just to follow up, the iDEN Direct Connect feature is expected to start being phased out (or no new service to be sold?) in 2013. I believe Sprint's CEO Dan Hesse stated that iDEN will still be around until 2017 or 2018, however. Later this year Sprint plans to release their next version of DC that uses the Sprint network. This will be different from their last (failed) attempt and also shouldn't require high speed data, so the coverage area will be equal to that of the entire Sprint network's coverage area.
Sprint has been moving backwards under the leadership of Dan Hesse. He collects a massive salary and has run a company into the ground. Just wait till direct connect users find out that their coverage will decrease when it moves off of iDen. Direct connect is based upon technology that is nearly a century old anyway. No big loss. Sprint is a
It would be accurate to say "technology FROM the last century", since the first iDEN phone was manufactured by Motorola in 1994. Over "a decade and a half old", that's the ticket. COtech
