Nextel new phones / CDMA?????????

Last I knew they were going to use a new Codec and split up the TDMA channels into 6 instead of 3 I believe is how it is going to go. They will leave the option to go to CDMA open, but have not committed to it. That was the last I read in Wireless Week, but that was a while ago.

 

they have a problem...they can't really upgrade to gsm or cdma...even though they want to there is no feasible way yet to do it YET..without loosing thier walkie talkie...they said "we're skipping 3g and looking forward to 4G"...hmmm...so they'll upgrade thier network i guess in 5-7 years...not too smart in my opinion...

just to let you know moto sold thier shares of nextel(actually they are in the process) they will own less than 6% of nextel after they have competed the transaction....on an interesting note they bought a company called winphoria which is contracted by verizon to do PTT for them...

 

Motorola said they bought winphoria for their switching capabilities more than the PTT feature.

Nextel will migrate to CDMA in a few years, the PTT will be enhanced with a push to view service and operability on a global scale. Iden will still be around to support the public & emergency services sector.

 

OR

Maybe very smart and Nextel will keep being a profitable company with happy customers. Cant move to gsm or cdma with out lossing ptt? WHAT? thought vzn was gonna release their walkie talkie "me too" sevice last month. Its not out yet? hmmmmmm All the experts on all these forums had vzn release in june or july..... Nextel skipping 3g might be a very smart move since 3g seems very over rated and a big waste of money these days, if other providers such as vzn have 3g right now... what do they provide their customers that the others not 3g provide their customers? Cost effective? or a waste of money and ego? Moto selling/buying shares in any companies are only just that. You might feel the need to read into it and spin it but in reality moto is just buying and selling shares.... maybe just diversifying a bit.... Moto being a manufacture for many providers need to be just that, and maybe not tied to one or another too tightly. Moto buying winphoria also makes sence, again Moto is a manufacture for many cellular providers, they need the technology to build for all of the companies (or they would have to license it) A big company such as moto it only makes sence to own it. So that they may continue to manufacture great phones for their customers.

To answer the threa I did read somewhere I think... That Nextel's future move will be to CDMA

 

Nextel isn't skipping 3G. They are stuck in 2G forever. The most they will do is get to 2.5G. But right now, nobody can say what services 3G carriers are providing that the non-3G carriers can't, because there are no 3G carriers in the US yet! Everyone is still 2G/2.5G at the moment. If you are thinking about Sprint being 3G, just remember that Vision is nothing more than a 2.5G service disguised as 3G.

 

Nextel will never be the same as everyone else even if they do switch to CDMA or GSM. The reason is that they use non-standard frequencies; not cellular, not PCS. This has really boxed Nextel in. If they rolled out CDMA or GSM, they would need to get someone to create special phones for them just like Moto currently does.

Nextel is $crewed here. They use a frequency band that no one else does. Think about how difficult it has been to get GSM800 phones and two US companies and more in Latin America will be using those. Never mind the fact that Nextel has half the customers of ATT or Cingular to my recollection.

Objectively, Nextel is failing. Others are coming out with PTT (which probably won't be quite as good, but good enough to lure customers). They have to upgrade their network to remain competitive. They own useless spectrum for anything, but a proprietary system. As they fall further behind in technology, customers will leave and Nextel will put up a last ditch effort to upgrade their network, but the phones for it will come too late or never and they will fade into relative obscurity through apathy of the industry. A little overstated, but I wouldn't want to be in their shoes: tring to convince customers not to leave once my only advantage was no longer an advantage; tring to upgrade a network with no phones currently made that I could give my customers when it is up; tring to convince companies to build specialty phones for my network which customers have no reason for choosing. Maybe Nextel will be able to work something out, but it doesn't look like an easy task.

 

Hmmmm but on the other hand Nextel IS making money, has loyal customers. The same can be said of cdma phones too, very few are made, compared to what is made for GSM and TDMA. Failing??? Na dont think so. Nextel has many advantages over some of the other providers, however a customer would only know about those. It's not just PTT. Nextel will be able to keep up wih the market when the time comes. Thru all the marketing they are doing thru professional sports and other industries they will have more and more loyal customers. They will have the backing to continue to stay a leader in the wireless market

 

CCCC, where did you read that very few CDMA phones are made, compared to what is made for GSM and TDMA? That's a very amusing statement. Which company in the US is known for having the best selection of phones? You know it! Sprint! and they are? CDMA.....It is true that more GSM than CDMA phones are made, but not by much. Also, I want you to find out how many TDMA phones have come out this year in comparison to CDMA and then tell me if you were right or wrong.

Nextel on the other hand has a very poor and expensive selection made exclusively by Motorola. It is true they are beating expectations and are doing really well and probably will continue to do well in the next year or so. But no one is debating their current status. We are only discussing the future of Nextel. The party will soon be over for them and unfortunately, this is unavoidable. We all know where the wireless industry is headed, and I don't really know (unless you can give a reasonable explanation) how Nextel will be able to compete in a world with high speed 3G phones, with only Motorola on their side. Tell me, in 3 or 4 years what's the future iDEN and Motorola can offer Nextel? Do you think everyone will be playing with PTT like a toy as many are doing today? PTT is only a fashion trend that will die soon enough and people will move on to more advanced features. What's Nextel going to do when Sprint, Verizon, AT&T, T-Mobile and Cingular begin offering video-messaging?

I am truly sorry, but we simply have to accept the fact Nextel has no 3G path and hence no future in the wireless industry. As a radio-dispatch company, they may continue being good, but the fact is in a few years they won't be able to offer advanced 3G services like the rest. Like I said, they are doing well now, but that's only now. The future won't be the same. They better enjoy it while it last.

 

I guess that depends how you define 3G and/or what your interest is in defining it in a particular way. I choose to define it as the technologies that the International Telecommunication Union has defined as IMT-2000 technologies. The ITU's definition includes, among others, CDMA2000 (1xRTT, 1xEV-DO, and 1xEV-DV), WCDMA/UMTS, and EDGE. See, among other ITU sources, Figure 2 of http://www.itu.int/osg/spu/publications/sales/mobileinternet/exec_summary.html. By that definition, Sprint and Verizon, as well as many CDMA2000 carriers in Latin America, Asia, eastern Europe and elsewhere are indeed 3G carriers.

Whether or not they you classify their services as "3G services" and how lucrative/useful those services are is a separate issue.

 

edge and cdma2000 1xrtt are intermediray steps to true 3g....thats why the color is different than the true 3g technologies such as ev-do , ev-dv and w-cdma...itu has only declared that w-cdma and ev-do as 3G all other technologies are intemediary steps..

 

I've got to agree with bobo. Nextel is fine now, but they don't have an upgrade path. While PTT is an advantage, it is an advantage that every carrier will have in a year or so. I don't know of any other advantages for Nextel, but I would like to hear about them.

Nextel's disadvantages as I see it:
1. Phones: They only carry Motorola phones; the phones get extremely poor stand-by battery life; they're BIG and HEAVY.
2. Network: iDEN doesn't sound as good as any other digital technology; coverage is streetmap like with no analog backup (this is also true for many PCS carriers, but Sprint can roam on analog and GSM is being agressively rolled out by a number of companies so, while Nextel's situation will not improve, other's will); low-capacity network technology.

Nextel could try offering more agressive plans to get customers, but their network just isn't that efficient. Even with an upgrade to 6 time-slots, you are looking at half the efficiency of CDMA or GSM. I wish Nextel the best of luck, but the outlook isn't that good. You've said that Nextel has other advantages, but I'm sure those would be tied to using iDEN which won't suffice in the end as other technologies make it look like we look at analog today.

Nextel needs to upgrade its network to one of the standard technologies - CDMA or GSM. They'll have to get Ericsson or Lucent or someone to create special equipment for them since they are using non-standard frequencies. That will cost a lot of money. Then they will have to spend two years rolling out the equipment, draining their cash flow. Then they will have to convince handset makers that they should make special phones for 10.6 million people. It has been difficult to get GSM800 phones when ATT and Cingular have a combined 42.8 million customers. After all that, they can start selling a product that eliminates any of their old advantages (like circuit switched PTT) that competes with other companies. Of course, these phones would have to be multi-band to be able to roam on to other networks using the same technology.

Realistically, it'll be a while before this becomes a big problem, but I wouldn't want to be the stratagist to try to find Nextel's way out of this box.

 

Then how do you define "true 3G?" If you look at the actual ITU recommendation that lists the approved IMT-2000 interfaces (BTW, there are five, not two), it lists CDMA-Multi-Carrier (aka CDMA2000). This includes all CDMA2000 iterations, not just EV-DO and EV-DV. The approved interfaces also include EDGE, WCDMA/UMTS, and TD-SCDMA (and DECT, a cordless telephone technology if I remember correctly...I don't think it's actually being pursued for 3G use anywhere, but I've never looked either). I haven't looked at it in a while, but it's ITU-R recommendation M.1457, but unfortunately it looks like you have to pay to get it from the ITU website. If I can find a free link to the relevant text, I'll edit this message later.

Note that the ITU also has a list of IMT-2000 deployments around the world, which includes CDMA2000 1X (RTT, not EV-DO or EV-DV) systems at http://www.itu.int/osg/imt-project/Subdirectories_links/implementation.html. The list hasn't been updated since Dec. 2002, but that's irrelevant for this discussion. A newer list would only have more networks listed. EDGE isn't there, I presume, because I believe there's only one commercially active EDGE network in the world (Cingular in Indiana, I believe), and it only launched recently.

A graphic representation of the five IMT-2000 technologies is reproduced at http://cdg.org/technology/3g.asp. (Yes, the CDMA Development Group obviously has a CDMA bias, but the diagram is an ITU diagram...I just can't find it on the ITU's IMT-2000 site since it's been revamped).

We're way off-topic here, and this discussion belongs in the Wireless Network Technologies forum anyway.

 

AHAH!!!

I HAVE THE ANSWER TO ALL YOUR QUESTIONS!!!

NEXTEL WILL BE TRIUMPHANT ... LOVE LIVE NEXTEL!!!

Just look at this slide show presented to the shareholders/investors....

http://media.corporate-ir.net/media_files/NSD/NXTL/presentations/nxtl_021217b.pdf

 

The plan isn't terrible, but it isn't good. A 12:1 interconnect seems a bit unreasonable in a 30khz bandwidth. In a lab it would be fine, but in the real world where interfearance is a concern it would be devistating. The wider the band, the less likely that interfearance will cause problems. The real problem is that such a small channel isn't able to be reused much. It's the reason TDMA isn't efficient and it's the reason iDEN isn't efficient. GSM channels can be re-used in thirds or even on every tower with frequency hopping. CDMA channels can be reused on every tower.

It's just lagging behind in spectral efficiency features. Discontinuous transmission isn't even discussed. DTX can double spectral efficiency (as it is assumed that people speak less than half of the time). RF congestion relief means you'll be transmitting to a tower further away if the one closest to you doesn't have the capacity. It helps, but not if all your towers are crowded.

CDMA and GSM are just so far ahead and continue at a faster pace. WiDEN will equal 1xRTT's data speeds when EV-DO and EDGE/WCDMA become the norm.

It is difficult to go it your own. There is a reason why standards emerge.

 

If they decide to go 3g. with their unlimited incoming and unlimited plans, Do they have enough spectrum to do the overlay? I think thats why they are holding off, they may be looking at Cingular and saying this our future, GOD help us...

 

Judging by the presentation it seems as though all their plans have been slightly ahead of schedule, but nothing big.

I'd like to know how they can surpass current voice quality with HALF the transmission time when the current 3:1 method is barely better than the TDMA we know so well. Wasn't this tried with ordinary TDMA years ago and dismissed because the quality was so terrible? 6:1 Vocoders are NOT an upgrade path! They are a duct tape and gum solution to an existing capacity problem with a dead-end protocol.

Currently, their frequency allocations are cut and pasted like a pre-schoolers art project. Where are they going to get this 900 MHz bandwidth they speak of?

"WiDEN" seems reasonable, but it's so far out that the REAL providers will be another 2 G's ahead by the time Nextel's rollout is complete.

How the guy giving this presentation was not ambushed in the parking lot by a mob of angry stockholders is beyond me.

 

Nextel already has licenses in the 935-941MHz SMR band in most parts of the US. They just recently turned off most of the analog trunking systems on those frequencies. They are getting ready to do something with those channels.

Remember, iDEN is a two-way radio system, not a cellular/PCS network standard like GSM, CDMA, TDMA, etc. It was designed by Motorola to replace analog trunked radio systems with digital ones. Other large iDEN systems exist that most don't know about. AIRINC owns one, Southern Company owns one (called SouthernLINC), and iDEN networks can be bought for onsite operations (it is known as Telario).

The reason why Nextel CAN'T convert to a CDMA platform is their lack of continuous spectrum. Their allocations vary by market and you can't run CDMA without at least a 1.25MHz wide channel to do it. Their 800MHz channels are interleaved with other users, such as other SMR's and public safety radio systems. (Though Nextel wants all them to move to supposedly resolve interference that Nextel causes public safety by moving to the top of the 800 band from 862-870 and put PS down to 851-861. While it will stop the interference, it will also give Nextel that spectrum continuity they want. What a deal for them!)


One day, Nextel will wake up and stop trying to make wine out of water playing celphone company and get back to what they once were, an ESMR with a great network for business communications.

 

and that's the future some Nextel defenders around here are too blind to see....

 

WiDEN will equal 1X speeds but will take up quite a few channels in the process, all it is a moto version of GPRS, combine 2,3,4 channels together to get higher datat speeds with higher latency.

Nextel is hoping the FCC will let them do the freq swaps with public safety and get the 10Meg of continous spectrum in the 1900mhz range all for free and some money to help public safety move to other freqs., then they will have enough spectrum to go with something else. In the near term they are o'k long term with other companies offering PTT, more capacity, higher data, they are going to have flat growth within the next couple of years. At that point they will have to do something.

 

But how are they gonna get any 1900Mhz licenses? They are already taken by other carriers. Then, they will need to rebuild their entire network. By then, everyone else will be at least doing 4G....They'll be too late for the game. They may wanna bid for the 700Mhz licenses.