Sprint winds down while Latin American operator ramps up
Sprint CEO Dan Hesse has reportedly said that the company is planning to phase out its iDEN network, acquired with its $35 billion purchase of Nextel in 2005, to free up the network’s 800MHz spectrum for CDMA-based services instead.
At the same time, though, Motorola Solutions and NII Holdings — the operator of a number of iDEN-based networks in Latin America — have inked a deal extending Motorola’s contract to supply NII with iDEN infrastructure through 2014.
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iDEN is a mobile telecommunications technology that Motorola developed in the mid-nineties that combines a cell phone and trunked radio, or Enhanced Specialized Mobile Radio (ESMR), valuable for instantaneous push-to-talk (PTT) communications. With PTT’s efficiency, many people can carry many conversations over only a few distinct frequencies.
For example, governments use PTT for two-way communication among fire departments, police and other first responders and municipal entities. The PTT feature developed by Motorola for iDEN has a reputation as the fastest setup in the industry.
So what’s the fate of iDEN and its associated, highly revered, PTT protocol?
Hesse hasn’t specified a timeline for the iDEN transition to CDMA, a move that was anticipated when Sprint acquired Nextel. And we don’t yet know the fate of Sprint’s speedy iDEN-based PTT service, called Direct Connect. There are still be plenty of dispatch-oriented applications in the United States that could continue to make use of the popular service — or be left in the lurch if Direct Connect should fade away with iDEN.
Elsewhere in the world, though, there appears to be a stronger commitment to iDEN. The refreshed Motorola-NII contract reflects “a strong commitment to iDEN technology by both Motorola and NII Holdings,” said Alan Strauss, NII’s vice president and CTO, in a statement.
Strauss said NII’s markets show a strong demand for the services provided by iDEN technology and that iDEN and PTT services are one of the “major differentiating factors in our offering.”
