Nextel Communications, Inc. was an American wireless service operator that merged with and ceased to exist as a subsidiary of Sprint Corporation, which would later be bought by T-Mobile US and folded into that company. Nextel in Brazil, and formerly in Argentina, Chile, Peru, the Philippines, and Mexico, is part of NII Holdings, a stand-alone, publicly traded company not owned by Sprint Corporation.
Nextel Communications traces its roots to the 1987 foundation of FleetCall by Morgan O'Brien, Brian McAuley, Chris Rogers, and Peter Reinheimer. FleetCall changed its name to Nextel Communications, Inc. in 1993. Nextel provided digital, wireless communications services, originally focusing on the fleet and dispatch customers, but later marketed to all potential wireless customers. Nextel's network operated in the 800-MHz Specialized Mobile Radio band and used iDEN technology developed by Motorola. Nextel's iDEN network offered a then unique push-to-talk "walkie-talkie" feature in addition to direct-dialed voice calls. Nextel was one of the first providers in the United States to offer a national digital cellular coverage footprint.
Prior to merging with Sprint Corporation in 2005, Nextel Communications, Inc. was a publicly traded company. Shares traded on the NASDAQ under the ticker symbol NXTL. Nextel was headquartered in Reston, Virginia, United States.
At the time of its 2005 merger with Sprint Corp., Nextel had over twenty million subscribers in the United States and served 198 of the top 200 markets. Nextel Communications, Inc. offered postpaid services under the Nextel brand and prepaid services under the Boost Mobile brand.
In late 2010, Sprint Nextel announced plans to decommission the Nextel iDEN network; on May 30, 2012, Sprint Nextel announced that it would shut down the Nextel network as early as June 2013. The Nextel network was officially shut down at 12:01am on June 30, 2013, and Sprint began the process of deploying LTE equipment on the 800 MHz spectrum formerly used by the iDEN network.
Before the acquisition by T-Mobile US, Sprint Corporation continued to offer pre-paid services under the Boost Mobile brand and also offered push-to-talk services as Sprint Direct Connect using CDMA equipment.
The founders chose the name "FleetCall" because the company's network used the 800 MHz Specialized Mobile Radio frequencies designated by the Federal Communications Commission for use in fleet vehicles dispatch. The core of the business model was to buy these fleet dispatch frequencies from existing operators at a substantial discount when compared to the cost for the equivalent bandwidth available via auction from the Federal Communications Commission. These "non-cellular" frequencies were made usable for a consumer and business wireless voice telephone service with the iDEN technology developed by Motorola, which some observers at the time said would not be practical. Initially, FleetCall did not want to include the push to talk feature in their phones, but the FCC required it as the initial frequencies were licensed for dispatch use. Later, Nextel would use the push-to-talk feature as a key marketing advantage.
Nextel was also an industry leader in customer lifecycle management. They invested significantly in analytics capability, which allowed them to surpass their competitors in handling customer concerns effectively. The company also developed capabilities allowing it to assess and review customer relationship values objectively and to project and respond to customer loyalty. As a result of these efforts, and what was reported to be a strong focus on customer satisfaction across the organization, Nextel was known for industry-leading customer retention rates, average revenue per user, and customer lifetime value.
The push-to-talk feature, with which Nextel has gained popularity, was made interoperable with the QChat technology on the Sprint network in 2008. Sprint had originally launched its own push-to-talk service, known as ReadyLink, which is based on SIP. Due to the difference in technology, users of the ReadyLink service were never able to make or receive push-to-talk calls with users of the iDEN technology. By 2009, Sprint began phasing out QChat to again focus on marketing iDEN devices.
Nextel also offers a feature on some of their phones, marketed as MOTO Talk. The technology uses the 900 MHz ISM band and provides ten FHSS channels for an off-network push to talk communications between individual phones that are not necessarily in range of wireless towers.
After the merger, Sprint maintained the Nextel trademark as an unrelated group in Florida not affiliated with Sprint filed two trademarks and opened its businesses under the Nextel name. Sprint has sued the group that alleges trademark infringement.
Before rebanding, public safety organizations, business and industry organizations, and SMRs/ESMRs both operated in the 851-861 MHz range. ESMRs had exclusive use of the 861-866 MHz range, and public safety organizations had exclusive use of the 866-869 MHz range.
During the rebanding process, the following occurred:
After rebanding, public safety organizations and critical infrastructure institutions obtained the exclusive use of 851-854 MHz. ESMR systems (primarily Nextel) were given exclusive use of 862-869 MHz range, and public safety, business/industrial users, and low-power SMRs shared the 854-862 MHz spectrum. 860-861 MHz is designated as an "Expansion Band", and 861-862 MHz is designated as a "Guard Band". No licensees other than ESMR are required to relocate to channels above 860 MHz.
The use of contiguous spectrum allows for simple filters to be installed to protect public safety radio systems from interference, which is currently impossible under the existing mixed allocations in the 800 MHz band.
Nextel (Sprint) paid for much of the cost of this reconfiguration, but in compensation for lost 800 MHz spectrum, the company received spectrum in the 2 GHz band at 1910–1915/1990–1995 MHz. This spectrum was located near the existing Sprint PCS allocations and can be used to expand the number of channels available for that service, without needing to bid for additional capacity in a spectrum auction.
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