How Verizon could KILL Nextel in 30 months

hehhe how about How Sprint will kill them both!

 

Well, I think that Verizon would have to get better battery life to mount any sort of challenge. As terrible as Nextel's 75hr standby and 200min talk is, Verizon's 55hr standby and 150min talk is so much worse.

 

Honestly, I don't care either way as I use neither Sprint or Verizon but I know that Nextel must die. So as long as Verizon or Sprint kill Nextel all is right with the world.

 

PTT is old news... I've had SEVERAL nextel customers come to verizon not even wanting to look at the PTT plans. They are sick of it and the MTM minutes are very appealing to them.

 

I think Sprint and Verizon need to do this together...Nextel is a whiny brat! Sprint RL to Verizon PTT would be great. I like the RL7000??? the rugged 4900, it looks cool.

 

Nextel is their own worst enemy, a product of greed and shortsighted thinking. In it's heyday (early to mid 1990's) Nextel took the two-way radio (SMR) business by storm, offering something no one else could: a dispatch radio that could do telephone interconnect (aka cellular phone feature), private call (aka direct connect) and paging (text messaging) all in one small (even back then compared to the competition) unit. Thousands of radio shops literally went out of business overnight. Many sold their 800MHz SMR licenses to Nextel and the owners profited greatly from this. Nextel grew exponentially.

By 1997, the Nextel had invested hundreds of millions of dollars of OPM (other people's money aka investors) into acquiring licenses, building out their network, and getting customers. The reality that something called PCS was coming into being caused the heads of state of Nextel to rethink their business model as an ESMR. After all, they were heavily in debt and had to do something to convince investors to keep giving, so they decided to market to individuals as a cellphone provider. NEXTEL MISTAKE NUMBER ONE OF THE CENTURY: THINKING YOU CAN COMPETE WITH CELLULAR AND PCS WITH A SYSTEM NOT DESIGNED FOR IT. This lead to where they are today:

They have a system that is badly outclassed by their competition. When Nextel began installing picocells (small cells) sites to increase coverage and capacity, something really nasty started happening. Remember that big rush to grab all those 800MHz channels from Mr. Local SMR? Well those channels are in between ones used by governments and public safety radio systems around the country. Normally, SMR's on 800MHz don't cause so much interference to those users because SMR operators place their base stations on high locations such as mountaintops, tall buildings and the like. They operate on an "noise limited" basis and the radios are deisgned to work with weak signals. So are public safety radios, because your local government cannot afford to spend 500 million dollars on a radio system to cover your city/county, so they do it with a minimum number of sites. But here comes Nextel placing their high powered base units on every street corner to give the same coverage as Verizon, Sprint and other cellular/PCS providers.

The cops' poor radio can't hear that base/repeater 10 miles away because a Nextel site is literally wiping out his radio. Kinda like your wife/girlfriend trying to wisper to you when a train goes by. MISTAKE NUMBER TWO: PICOCELL SITES CAUSE HARMFUL INTERFERENCE TO OTHER USERS ON THE 800MHZ BAND. WHAT'S WORSE NEXTEL...IT'S THE COPS!!! Uh-oh, now the FCC can't turn the other cheek on this one, especially since 9/11/2001, where it became clear to the general public how critical radios systems are to emergency services. Now Nextel can't run from this problem anymore. It was their own monster and they must face it.

Now we have cellular companies that want to "play" SMR! Kinda ironic! Wind the clock back 7 years and any cellular or PCS executive would have laughed out of their office if you wanted "two way radio" on a cellphone. THEY PROBABBLY WOULD HAVE TOLD YOU TO GET NEXTEL!!! Now since Nextel nosed into those boys arena, they are gonna play ball. And this is where the competition CAN kill them. Cellular and PCS systems (especially of the CDMA variety) are more expandable then iDEN. Cellular and PCS providers have much more radio spectrum to play with. They don't interfere with other users like Nextel does. They can offer advanced services at a lower cost than Nextel can. Most of the carriers like Verizon and Cingular have solid financial histories, and their core networks are mature and built out. And they aren't going to have to shell out billions to move because they are spitting on the cops shoes' either.

All this would never have happened if Nextel would have played ball right as an ESMR. They probabbly could have made some real inroads with public safety and made billions of them alone. But since the word is getting round quick that Nextel is becoming a real thorn in our side...it won't be long until Nextel is.....DONE.

 

You make sense, Nextel could have continued on the ESMR path, and gone after more of the emergency services markets....most localities do not like having to maintain a radio network... Expecially since many motorola shops have gone under...the ones that are left are pretty expensive.

 

It would be tough to go back, especially since they are causing all kinds of Havoc in the public safety sector with their interference prolems. I guess they had a path to go down, and they chose to go more cellular.

It seems now they are purchasing broadband wireless spectrum.....I wonder what the plan is.