i was with sprintpcs for about 6 years.i switched to nextel about a month ago. service here is much better here with nextel. now they have a hybrid phone that works with sprint for voice and nextel for the walkie talkie. anyone know why it wont do voice on nextel or if they plan to make a phone that will do voice on both? anyone know anything about that. i have called sprint and nextel no one know anything about it there

 

May be a limitation of the phone.

I used to be in the cell site end of the industry, and I can tell you that the Nextel and Sprint sites use very different technology, and that they plan on running both networks for years (Upwards of 5-6).

so the problem is likely a limitation of that. Sorry I don't know specifics.

 

yes i know sprint is cdma and nextel is iden

 

Its 'cuz the Nextel voice side blows chunks as far as bandwidth & technology goes. It's a dinosaur network and they want it gone. However, the band they use for the walkie talkie is perfect for what its intended use is... very reliable and robust. So, take the best of both worlds and vo'la... the hybrid!

 

nextels iden network aint it all most the same as GSM like cingular? do you think i should look in to getting a hybrid? do you have sprint or nextel?

 

I would hold out a while on the hybrid phones. For one, I've heard that getting the billing set up on these phones can be a nightmare. The hybrid phones exist to a) help ease the congestion on the Nextel iDEN network and b) help begin and facilitate Sprint's goal of eventually migrating all iDEN customers to CDMA. Having it use iDEN for voice would defeat both of those purposes. Moreover, Sprint has been co-locating CDMA panels to iDEN-only cell sites since the merger to match Nextel's network and then some. It, of course, isn't finished and the work is slow going, but eventually anywhere that there is Nextel voice, SPrint voice should work as well.

Additionally, these phones have another flaw: no CDMA 850. This eliminates some of the roaming agreements that Sprint enjoys with roaming partners Verizon, Alltel, US Celluar among others which gives Sprint the coverage that they have.

Were it me, I might wait a bit until the phones were more refined. The IC902 should be out in a few months which will have EV-DO, camera and mp3 capabilities if such things are important to you. Hopefully future hybrid phones will also include CDMA 850.

 

I scrapped Nextel. Was with them for a good number of years. Service started to slide and I jumped ship to Cingular and have loved every minute of it. I should also note the real reason I jumped to Cingular was the corporate discounts... it was actually cheaper to pay Nextel the $200 cancelation fee and switch to Cingular for a year. Plus I got the bad-**** Blackberry Pearl for next to nothing...

 

I spoke with a local Sprint/Nextel Rep because my Fire Co. has Nextel and we changed to the hybrid, he stated that Nextel is still running analog voice and Sprints is digital. He said to expect a total phase out of Nextel within the next 3-5 years as Sprint will absorb the Nextel 2 way service and disband Nextel name. Right now the hybrids are basic phones and are supposed to evolve with better features as the demand increases for the phones. Lets see if he was bs'ing me or if this pans out

 

I had Nextel for about 5 years. Then Sprint bought them and the service went to ****. I couldn't get a hold of ANYONE who knew what the **** was going on, and somehow m ysteriously I kept getting these letters in the mail that said "We are continually working to improve service in your area!"

Anyway, after 5 years of my life, I switched to Verizon. Nothing but the best in customer service. I also got 3 lines for the same price I was paying for one line through Sprint/Nextel. The service has been great and I have never dropped a call, ever.

You know what the best part about Nextel is? "Por favor espere mientra el cliente de Nextel a que esta llamando es localizado."

 

I had Sprint for years, but since I'm a country-boy at the roots, everytiem I'd go home, I'd lose my cellular service. Once you get away from a city or more than 30 inches off the interstate, your service with Sprint, is sketchy at best.

Cingular was OK, but they too have left the smaller regions (They were paying bandwidth charges on smaller carriers antennas- I guess it wasn't profitable enough.)

I'm with VerizonWireless now. It's OK, and service is sketchy in the country- but in the city I have had no problems with them. I take that back, I did have one problem. My first bill. You expect the first bill to be high with all the start-up fees, etc.. but, my bill was CRAZY. About $110.00 over what I expected. I asked, WTF's up with this bill? And they were like, $69.00 of these charges are due to bandwidth usage, and the other 30+ is for text messaging...

Needless to say, I challenged that. They had record of how many times I had "been on the internet" with my phone, etc... I said, I sit in front of a computer 8, 9, 10 hours a day. I have a 100 Mbps connection (at work), why would I need to go on the internet on the phone, when I have a 19" monitor sitting in front of me. (I had never been on the net on the cell, for real)

So, they had this guy talk to me, he tried to tell me some BS that the Treo 650 accesses the internet on it's own for downloads, etc.. I said, "Dude, I had a Treo 600 whihc is not much different than this, it had internet access (Free with Sprint) and it never went on the internet on it's own...

After a few rounds, they took the $69.00 off. Then the text messages. Somehow, every farking vendor in the world seems to have my verizonwireless E-mail address, so I get schyt from vitamin shops, overstock.com, and everybody. Little did I know I had to PAY for INCOMING text messages. They went 50/50 with me on those, because I had sent a few to the wife, which I didn't have a problem paying for. We blocked text messaging, then finally I stopped beign cheap and payed for it. We get like 1,000 text messages before we have to pay anything.

So, while I like somethings about VerizonWireless, I miss somethings, well, a LOT of things about SprintPCS. (Free internet, free text messages) But, for now- my VerizonWireless is OK... Nextel's phones were just so plain-jane, even the blackberry's. They did have one that I liked, but I wasn't about to fork over $350 (On top of the $150.00 credit) for it. But, it did have built-in Navigation- and I LOVED that.

For the next 14 months anyway!

This is the Nextel I liked...



But, once you go Treo, you can't go back to basic... Especially if you do any text messaging...

 

That was my last nextel phone! Treo's suck my *****! WORST phones EVER.

 

What can the Wackberry do that the Treo can't?

 

Remain stable, operate flawlessly with one hand.... not reboot and f'up constantly...

 

Oh, well, you got me there...

Mine does reboot more often than I like.
Mainly when synching up to my bluetooth wireless system in the MDX.

 

I was looking into them myself last week... I currently have Sprint with a 23% corporate discount, 2000 anytime minutes on a family shared plan with two other phones (fiancee and mother), unlimited PCS to PCS, unlimited text messages, unlimited internet access, and that's about it. All together, my plan comes out to $117 and some change including taxes and fees, etc.

Service near my house stinks... I'm right at the edge of two cells, neither of which is strong enough to hold a signal for more than a couple of minutes at a clip. Nextel's service at home, however, is stellar, both voice and beepy-click modes, and I get a 10% corporate discount with them.

I was really hopping the hybrids would be able to utilize the Nextel network for voice as necessary, but, alas, they don't. My four sisters, brother, and parents all have Sprint, so it would be nice to still be airtime-free to talk to them.

I looked into the Nextel hybrids and was pricing out similar plans. With their family plan, I can get free incoming, so that'll save minutes, 2100 minutes a month, all three phones transferred, etc, etc, and my rate would go up about $35/month. I could probably offset that by cutting back the minutes since we'll be getting free incoming, but the things that turned me off were: 1) Customer service's lack of knowledge about the product. Yup, I called to get more info, and the CSR didn't know squat about them, and neither did the supervisor. I asked a few relatively simple questions about the networks (can the hybrid use the Nextel network? Well, it shows you have coverage on the Sprint network, so why would you need Nextel's network? Because my 'coverage' sucks. 2) The phones aren't quite what I'm looking for feature-wise either... the CSR couldn't even tell me if the phone used the PCS Vision network or the Nextel internet connection, or how the two differed from each other?!!?

So, for now, I'm staying with Sprint. We'll see how the market unfolds. When they announced the merger, I also predicted that they would embrace the beepy-click network and do away with the iden. This seems like the first step, but in the mean time, I'm stuck with the battery-sucking ready-link and the lousy home service. (but it's stellar everyplace else I go 99.99% of the time)