Kyocera DuraPlus Brings Durability to Sprint

As I said already, Sprint Direct Connect comes the closest so far to matching iDEN DC in terms of speed, when there is strong Rev A signal. However, there is a LOT of Sprint's network that still has never been upgraded to Rev A, so overall the jury is still out on how well SDC will CONSISTENTLY perform over the ENTIRE Sprint network. Nextel's iDEN PTT, still going strong after nearly 15 years (the last six years of which it has not been upgraded one iota) is still the gold-standard, and only time will tell if SDC can match that.

Certainly CDMA data speed is light-years better than WiDEN, no argument there.

In Nextel's defense, they had already rolled out regional trials of OFDMA-based high-speed data network to run alongside iDEN, to meet Nextel users' data needs while retaining iDEN for PTT & voice. Nextel also had plans to eventually migrate their iDEN network to CDMA, which is why Nextel had Qchat (still in early development stage) in their pocket when Sprint bought them. The Flarion OFDMA network plans were scrapped the instant Sprint took over, and Sprint bungled the Qchat implementation, so that fell flat.

In a year or so there will be no remnant of Nextel in the US, when Sprint shuts down iDEN in 2013. No other US carrier, not even Sprint itself, has the same committment to PTT that Nextel had, so I'm guessing that PTT use in the US will decline precipitously as soon as iDEN is powered off. Then you Sprint/CDMA fanbois can jump with joy that the last nail was put in Nextel's coffin. You'll soon see that Nextel was not the problem with Sprint, it is SPRINT that is the problem with Sprint.