Court sticks to its guns, Sprint has to vacate bandwidth by June
It's been known for years that some of Sprint Nextel's Direct Connect spectrum causes bouts of interference with public safety equipment, and the FCC got the ball rolling on a plan several years ago for the carrier to swap some airwaves with agencies around the country by June of this year to keep everyone happy. Problem is, some 500 of those agencies still aren't ready to trade, and Sprint has taken issue with the fact that the FCC wants it to meet its end of the bargain by next month anyhow. Nevertheless, a federal appeals court has ruled in the FCC's favor, setting the wheels in motion for a possible massive loss of Nextel coverage on the drop-dead date of June 26 -- but industry analysts aren't too worried. Most seem to be predicting that the FCC will end up extending the deadline by six months or so anyway, so Kevin Martin and his ragtag gang must just love watching carriers sweat. Oh, not to mention a few million Direct Connect customers.[Via Phone Scoop]
Filed under: Sprint
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
MadMike @ May 7th 2008 2:53PM
Man, Sprint can't get a break can they? OUCH.
Jake H. @ May 7th 2008 3:17PM
i'm a nextel customer. we have 3 nextel phones. if they take over all the towers in june, i dont have direct connect(i have powersource, but my parents have traditional nextel)and my parents wont have a cellphone period. i'm going to see about going to tmobile. if they wont let mei guess that i'll swap over to regular sprint handsets, and force them to give me 3 upgrade discounts.
PEZ @ May 7th 2008 3:29PM
Right or wrong - the FCC is useless. They need to be disbanded, or, have a different approval process for certain things.
Warren @ May 7th 2008 4:18PM
Or just drop that douche Kevin Martin.
AlphaTeam @ May 7th 2008 4:20PM
It would suck to lose Direct Connect. iDen is the only true PTT network out there.
WiiTodd @ May 7th 2008 5:36PM
Damn officials probably got this technology from Nextel... now they are bullying them out.
PeterB @ May 7th 2008 6:18PM
Sprint: Soon to be sold off piece by piece in a town near you!
Sprint: Losing lawsuits at the speed of light.
Nextel: Done. For real.
Jamar @ May 7th 2008 8:23PM
Nextel needs to be dropped. If Sprint won't voluntarily do it this is a good start.
youngcalihottie @ May 7th 2008 8:57PM
as much as i dislike sprint, its not their fault if the 500 agencies arent ready yet. what regulatory body is forcing those agencies to meet THEIR deadline?
RmiXDflavoR @ May 7th 2008 10:33PM
A bit of topic but engadgetmobile.com refuses to report any news on what happened today in wireless industry. engadget.com get on the waggon, your dads on it :)
Roger Alford @ May 8th 2008 1:57AM
In the midst of all this, Sprint has debated if they want to sell off Nextel (leaving them with a lack of spectrum for 4G services), just as they sign a new contract and effectively take over controlling interest in ClearWire - again, still keeping the Clearwire name - and..... *takes a breath*, T-Mobile parent DT has announced they are "mulling" the idea of taking over Sprint.
Personally I hope T-Mobile buys out Sprint, immediately converts ALL customers on Nextel to CDMA with the new QChat phones (big discounting available), and releases SOME SORT of PTT on its GSM network (to compliment the whole Direct Connect network lacks that CDMA has)
And then go from there.
Okay, not a good idea, but if T-Mobile has the money and needs the spectrum, its not going to hurt them anymore then Sprint buying Nextel did. At least Nextel is more compatible with GSM then CDMA was.