Nextel by Motorola.. What is it????

Some companies use what is in effect, a "cellular" 2 way radio system. This way as long as you are within range of a cellular tower, your radio works, no matter what the distance. I think this is part of such a system.

 

It's either an M370 or M470 iDEN radio. While capable of using all the iDEN features such as group call, direct connect or phone calls they were typically deployed with only the group call enabled to be used as a replacement for what most would call a conventional two-way radio.

 

So I was right (I think)

 

Concept wise yes In reality, iDEN is a two way radio service WITH an telephone interconnect. Nextel just took full advantage of the telephone interconnect aspect and ran with it, this is the reason that the "Direct Connect" feature works so well is that's what the system was designed to do, it's not an overlay like the other carriers are trying to do now.

Also, when Nextel was expanding in the 90's it was buying up many local SMR operators, when picking up a lot of their clients they didn't want/need the phone service. They were happy with their existing two-way service and to keep customers like this satisfied the base and mobile variants were made. With where Nextel is now, there's far fewer of these installed then say five years ago. Most customers have simply made the cutover to handsets (albeit forced in many cases).