More on The Merger
Many businesses use Nextel's iDEN technology for dispatch, a needed but niche service. Independent, local radio carriers may soon offer iDEN service to compete for dispatch when Nextel moves away from it. As they surely will. When Nextel started they killed off hundreds of Mom and Pop dispatch operations; it will be a happy day when independents move back to their old territories.
Nextel continues testing Flarion but the company will not say if they will go with this "loner technology" or with the mainstream EVDO. Field reports much higher data rates with Flarion than EVDO but lack of handsets and carrier commitments are stalling any rollouts. Sprint's mismanagement of their new spectrum seems certain. More later.