Could have been a planned build that got held down my politics, tree huggers and whatnot or added for capacity, I think Nextel is still adding capacity sites. If you look at the FCCs ruling on Nextel it will still keep something like 25 khz of 800 spectrum that is more in line to the existing 850 Cellular A and B bands. The current Nextel 800 has uplink and downlink freq that are on either sides of the Public Service bands. Nextel is also getting some of the 2100 band.
This is still to bad though I think nextel could have done alot of good but oh well. Also not that this might be a good idea but I would just like to see Sprint step up and say. "Anyone with nextel will be given a free walkie talkie phone and converted over to CDMA and concentrate on that.