Nextel limited by iDEN
Nextel is limited by old technology, iDEN, but mostly by limited spectrum. Founded in 1987 as Fleet Call, Nextel cobbled together a nationwide cellular system by buying bits and pieces of spectrum used in the dispatch industry. These taxi and truck dispatch frequency sets weren't wide compared to conventional cellular radio blocks so Nextel has always battled capacity problems. This will now get worse.
An industry insider explains it like this:
"All of the channels for which Nextel is licensed are 25kHz wide. That's 25 here, 25 there, chopped up among many different licenses in a single market. The most you'd have in one block is 20 channels, for a total of 500 kHz."
"In comparison, IS-95 or 'narrowband CDMA' is 1.25 MHz wide. cdma2000 can occupy up to three of these 1.25 MHz channels. Flarion's OFDM is 1.25 MHz wide. UMTS is 5 MHz wide. Some proposals have been floated for 10 MHz wide channels. See the problem?"
"Even in the very few markets where Nextel might have 1.25 MHz (or more) of spectrum in a geographical area, it's very unlikely it would be contiguous. And it's very few markets where they have that much. No 1.25 MHz blocks of spectrum. No blocks of spectrum, no advanced technologies. No advanced technologies, no Nextel."
Based on overinflated capacity claims the FCC granted Nextel's original operating license, letting them in effect bypass the conventional cellular spectrum auction process. Nextel now hopes to swap frequency sets with other services, freeing them from the trap they created, and, once again, gaining an advantage against the other nation wide wireless carriers. Let's hope the government takes a much closer look at their business this time.