iDEN Direct Connect Fans
Hey there! I also like the new site (some naggy issues, but they`re not a real biggie), anyway, this is cool! We now have a place to chat up NDC and NEXTEL stuff in general, which to me is a REAL BIGGIE (even though i have a hybrid unit, i`m still a NEXTEL fan). N9NRA
Well, folks...this looks interesting. Unfortunately, I've experienced some weird server issues, but otherwise, things look to be ok. Still trying to find out how this thing works since I'm comparing it to the old Buzz. Still, this should be interesting indeed.
Thanks Sarah! I had made the request for this group in the suggestion section and was given the official "no"...
Thanks!
So Sarah was good enough to create a separate group for iDEN Direct Connect, and we dyed-in-the-woll Nextel fans aren't posting anything. What's wrong with this picture? Why isn't the BAW core group doing much posting these days?
"Inquiring minds want to know."
- Nxtl4me
Why are there fewer and fewer posts? Simple...what is there to post about that hasn't already been posted? Are there any "cool, new" Nextel phones coming down the pipe? NOPE. Are there any new, cool advertisements that don't regulate Nextel to merely a service, but actually promote it to be a brand? NOPE. Has the site been updated yet to make it more functional? NOPE.
Bottom line: This company continues to take one step forward and two steps back, only now, it's also permiated the BUZZ site too. And, if you ask me, that's why we see a complete lack of posting. I've all but abandoned this site...there's nothing now that really draws me to Sprint anymore (save you Nextel loyalists). A real shame when even Nextel folks give up.
QJ et al:
I agree with your assessment on the state of this new website, and the lack of any news or excitement regarding Nextel, and both conditions frustrate me as well. But at least consider two things:
1) There are a lot of newbies out there who need help and/or guidance and/or to learn of the history of Nextel. Without us, the "tribal knowledge" just dies.
2) If not us, who then will hold the executives, managers & employees of Sprint-Nextel accountable? We know what really matters, we know when they're spreading the bull around, and without us calling them on it, they'll only get worse over time.
Anyhow, I do not care for this new website (in particular the DISMAL SPEED PERFORMANCE and LOUSY OVERALL EFFICIENCY WITH OUR TIME HERE - Will, Lon, Sharmil CAN YOU HEAR US NOW???), and I too am frustrated with the lack of anything new percolating at Nextel, but at least consider the value that we old-timers, the ones with the greatest tribal knowledge and the ones who are not afraid to point out that the emperor isn't wearing any clothes, can still contribute if we hang in there and don't boycott the new site.
For example, Levi4u has been posting up a storm, I'm assuming in part trying to keep his finger in the **** until the cadre of old-timers starts posting again and takes up some of the load. I've been trying to keep my hand in it, but it ain't easy being practically solo.
I'm just sayin'...at least consider my two points.
Thanks,
- Nxtl4me
Nxtl,
Hate to say it, but I have pretty much given up on this site. Its the least user friendly forum I have ever been a part of. I'll visit once a week or so now, where before I made it nearly every day.
oh well
Von
Nxt4me, I hear your plea, but sadly...the people that really should hear those pleas ignore them. And I speak of management. Sprint continues to take a back seat (and rightfully so) given their lack of execution on critical projects. The company has given up working on network expansion, the company has given up bothering to promote Nextel (and now, it seems to have given up promoting Boost as well), and the company has given up trying to build out WiMAX. This company has only itself to blame. It's the arrogance that upper management continues to exude that is keeping this company from succeeding. The product ironically is actually pretty darn good. The message is decent. The execution and help from customer service is simply insulting at best. Add to that mix that BUZZ has now been taken down into that myrth that the rest of the company swims in happily, and there really is very little left of the company I loved to do business with (aka Nextel) that would make me wish to stay on and try to help others with.
When Sprint decides to help its customers, and assuming I am still a customer of SprintNextel's at that point, I will gladly come back and offer help and advice. For now, though, the ONLY advice I would provide others is for them to leave this company (as post-paid users continue to do) and never look back. Sprint wants to promote themselves in the way that "they" see fit? So be it. Let them go bankrupt. Let the users that are left cry over how great the company once was. The facts are there...management has ceased to care (assuming that they ever did care) about the Nextel loyalists, and now they're ceasing to care about the overall user experience in general. It is little wonder that T-Mobile (as crappy as their network is) continues to gain on Sprint...let alone the gains that AT&T and Verizon continue to make.
Bottom line: I may peak my head in every now and then, but without a serious update that makes this site far more user friendly and actually delivers on the promises that were originally made (wow...what a concept that would be), I doubt I'll remain an active poster...or even an customer...for much longer. That "drop dead" date is starting to loom large, folks. Sprint did it to Nextel, about time we did it to them (if you ask me).
I love nextel direct connect its the best feature of my phone,I have a Blackberry with direct connect and I love my phone.Thanks Sarah for ppl like us to have a place to go.
I've been regularly visiting, posting here and there to try to help others. I have always stood behind Nextel since the mid 90's. Nextel knew what customer service was! They went out of their way to help the customer, and put service tags out and didn't stop until the problem was corrected - follow thru and responsibility. I have a BB 8350i, and I do like my phone. iDEN is far superior to CDMA and GSM, but iDEN is still stuck back in the late 1990's... The voice clarity and dependable connection (even when the signal is low) can't be matched! I was really hoping that the merge with Sprint would make Nextel bloom into what it started out to be. I just can't figure out what TMobile merging (last I saw it was a 55% chance it would happen) would accomplish, except for the total market in all networks? Is it going to help the Nextel side? Sprint hasn't done anything with the iDEN network since the merge, why add another network? I don't want to give up my DC or the iDEN netowrk, but to get a BB and have coverage in places that I travel, I have to go to CDMA. The phones for iDEN aren't that exciting, and still on 2G?!?!?! What's with the antenna still? That's so out of date! Coverage hasn't expanded much either for iDEN, there is coverage along most of the interstates and major cities... iDEN used to be for business personnel, and it was the greatest company way back then... Business people want it all, too!!! Today's business industry depends on the phone and it's capabilities and coverage, so they will go where ever it's at and can get the best discounts... There's my 2 cents, for what it's worth...
If I am wrong about the following, please correct. This is the understanding that I have, simply put...
Verizon and Sprint - they share/roam off of each others towers as they are both CDMA
AT&T and TMobile - they share/roam off of each others towers as they are both GSM
Nextel - no one shares/roams off of iDEN towers because of the complexity of iDEN, however, CDMA & GSM dishes can be added to iDEN towers to expand coverage, but iDEN dishes cannot be added to CDMA & GSM towers
mistylh67:
Nice rundown on your long-time Nextel experience, great to have the perspective and support of a person like you on BAW/Community.
Regarding your last paragraph above, I believe it is all correct except the part "...iDEN dishes cannot be added to CDMA & GSM towers". There is no technical reason that iDEN antennas can't be added to a tower with GSM or CDMA antennas already on it.
Regarding roaming, iDEN users in all of the Americas can roam onto each others networks, as long as their account allows international DC and/or international calling. Canada, the US, and most latin American countries do have iDEN, so technically a Nextel user CAN roam onto other networks. I'm not sure about roaming between Nextel and SouthernLinc in the US, I have read conflicting reports on roaming agreements between those two in the lower 48 states. Maybe someone with that info will chime in and clarify that one point. In a nutshell, iDEN can and does roam, it's just that there are not as many iDEN carriers as there are CDMA and GSM carriers, so it SEEMS like iDEN can't roam, but it can.
- Nxtl4me
Thanks Nxtl4me. I had the understanding that iDEN was unable to roam onto other carriers - maybe that it is for the DC part only? If there is roaming capabilities, then it has progressed and I missed that update somewhere...
I think there is a misconception of your idea of roaming on to other networks. As Nxtl4me stated, there are agreements with other carriers, however, these carriers are still just iden based. they do not and can not support cdma/gsm. So yes, you can roam and it has been this way for at least the 10 years I've been working on Nextel. You just don't usually experience it unless you travel through one of the few "other" iden carriers coverage, ie. Canada, and SouthernLink. For all intesive purposes, iden does not roam like At&t, verizon, tmobile, or sprintpcs.
As far as adding Nextel onto a tower with cdma/gsm, Each carrier has their own lease agreement and leased space on the tower. It is just a matter of installing the equipment onto it. Just because there is a tower with cdma, gsm, and iden, doesn't mean they have anything to do with each other. it's just space on a tower.
Well, the "DC roaming" muddies the water a bit, because of the interconnect capability of iDEN-based Nextel and CDMA-based Qchat. So I can see where a person might think that for DC, Nextel iDEN customers and Sprint CDMA Qchat customers are "roaming", but in fact they don't roam, they interconnect via a DC-to-Qchat "bridge" between the two otherwise totally separate systems. Just like when you make a cell-phone call to a landline, you are using a system-to-system inteconnect ("bridge").
Even with the iDEN-to-Qchat bridge interconnect working, if you are an iDEN customer and you drive into an area where there is Sprint CDMA signal but no iDEN signal, your iDEN phone will not work at all, so that is not "roaming". Same thing if you have Sprint CDMA Qchat and you drive into an area with iDEN signal and no Sprint signal, then for you Qchat won't work, because there is no actual roaming between iDEN and CDMA. WIth a Sprint Qchat phone in an area with no Sprint CDMA signal but with Verizon CDMA signal, then your regular telephone wil work because it roamed onto Verizon;s CDMA voice network, but the Qchat won't work because you are not on Sprint's CDMA network. Confusing at first, I know, but it makes sense if you think about it for a bit.
So far, mobile phone users can only roam onto another carrier using the same technology. So Sprint & Verizon can roam onto each other because both use CDMA technology, and ATT and T-Mobile roam onto each other because both use GSM technology. But Verizon can't roam onto ATT and ATT can't roam onto Verizon, because the technologies are completely different.
Roaming requires two things (1) two carriers using the same technology, and (2) a roaming agreement between those two companies. In the absence of either one of those requirements, no roaming happens.
iDEN does indeed roam EXACTLY like any other technology used in mobile phones these days. It just seems different because in the US on iDEN there is only Nextel covering nearly the entire US all by itself (although Southernlinc is a separate iDEN system which covers only portions of a few southeastern states). But if you are a Nextel customer and you drive into Southernlinc terrirory, you will roam onto Southernlinc. Same thing if you go near the US-Canadian border, if you are a Nextel customer you will roam onto the Telus "Mike" iDEN network in Canada. In Mexico, you will roam onto NII's iDEN network (assuming your Nextel account allows international roaming, which you can either enable or not enable, depending on if you want to incur international roaming charges or not).
In a nutshell, iDEN does roam just like any other carrier, but iDEN can roam only onto another iDEN network, just as Verizon can only roam onto another CDMA network and ATT can roam only onto another GSM network. The only confusing part is the fact that Nextel effectively covers the US all by itself (although there is that smallportion covered by Southernlinc), whereas with CDMA both Sprint & Verizon each cover the entire US with CDMA, and ATT & T-Mobile both cover the entire US with GSM, so for them there is almost 100% overlap. WIth Nextel, there is almost zero overlap, so no other iDEN carrier onto which to roam.
I know that is a long explanation, but if you can wade through it and understand it, you'll see that it is not correct to state that "Nextel or iDEN do not roam".
I see I opened a can of worms so to speak... lol
I stated according to my knowledge and what I had learned. I left it opened as I knew there had to be some technology that I hadn't been able to acquire. Thanks for all the input.
I didn't mean to express the understanding that Nextel doesn't roam; I meant to express that the other networks (CDMA & GSM) are not compatible with Nextel (iDEN) for roaming purposes... I figured it was a common knowldge that there has to be an agreement to roam off of a tower... Every tower has an owner and the owner has to agree... we live in an era of dot the i's and cross the t's...
The iDEN network thru Nextel effectively covering the US by itself (except for a small portion - Southernlinc; and the international part) is maybe why unless you're in those areas, you don't know about it. I live in Ohio, so maybe the techs here don't know it either because I was recently told by them that iDEN cannot be added to CDMA & GSM towers because they are so different in technology, but CDMA & GSM are similar enough to be able to add dishes to each others towers; and that the technology behind CDMA & GSM are simple enough to add a dish to iDEN towers.
Glad I could get a good tech conversation going 
I think the what is confusing you is your concept of Towers. Most towers today are owned, not by a wireless company, but instead by a tower management company. the tower management company will lease space on the ground and on the tower for each individual carrier who wants coverage in that area. In some rare cases the towers are still owned by a wireless carrier themselves, but they still lease the space on the tower to anyone who will pay the price. Each carrier needs their own building and separate antennas. that is why you see so many antennas on some towers. When someone told you that iden could not be added to CDMA or GSM, they were speaking of the network itself, not the tower. Glad to be able to clear things up for you.
Regular Visitor
says:
This is really cool Sarah! I love the new redesign, and i was the first person in this group(other than you) I think it looks amazing.