Boost Mobile Confirms CDMA Phase Out

Jaden10 said:
As a matter of fact. Sprint is trying to get people over to iDEN now that they decided against selling it.

If Sprint needs to raise capital and there is a serious buyer, they probably wouldn't hesitate to sell Nextel. Trying to raise capital through equity would be very difficult in the current economic times for almost any company, most less one in Sprint's condition. Imagine the shareholder dilution that would be involved with that.

Jaden10 said:
Look at how long CDMA has been around. Over 10 years. They just keep upgrading it. Which is what iDEN needs. I know iDEN is based on TDMA. And TDMA is limited when compaire to CDMA.

But TDMA was upgraded to GSM. I don't think iDEN is at the end. If Motorola spends money on looking into upgrading iDEN, I think it can deliver surprisingly good results.

TDMA (IS-96) was developed in tandem with the AMPS analog system as a way to increase capacity. GSM *is* a TDMA technology, as is iDEN. The three are not compatible but based on the same principle of Time Division Multiple Access, just like AT&T and T-Mobile's HSPA networks are a type of CDMA that is not compatible with CDMA2000 which is deployed by Verizon and Sprint.

I don't think Sprint is interested in putting loads of money into the Nextel network at this time, let alone in current economic times. Motorola is having its own troubles and it is unlikely they will suddenly dump a lot of money into iDEN. Alcatel-Lucent has its own problems, and Nortel filed for bankruptcy. It's just not the best time for network equipment manufacturers.

Jaden10 said:
WiDEN (Which is 2.5 G)was suppose to be a upgrade for the data side of iDEN by bringing up to the data rate to 100kbps. And then in 2005 Nextel was testing Flash-OFDM which delivered upto 2.2Mbps. Which is about where EVDO left off. All in all if the proper motivation is there and the money is there. I can see iDEN becoming a serious competitor. And I will admit that they may never become the big boy on the block, but I feel they can become a strong and attractive alternative to the other companies.

In theory, it could be done, but again, it takes a lot of money. I also don't see Sprint wanting to run additional network types that would require additional equipment types, additional technical staff, and additional technical support staff.

With Qualcomm dropping the further development of CDMA2000 in favor of LTE, Sprint will also be faced with the decision of whether or not to upgrade their CDMA2000 network to LTE or WiMax, but that is awhile in the future.