Good question. Maybe other than spectrum allocation, they were looking for a company that was tops in customer satisfaction and delivery that they could easily purchase. Q-Chat also comes to mind, a CDMA based PTT service with initial connection times close to DC, the rights to which are owned by Nextel.

As for Cingular being "tops", Consumer Reports and J.D. Powers would definitely disagree with you on that one. Cingular is usually ranked last in overall customer satisfaction by both.

Right now, Sprint isn't doing well, but that is mainly because of poor marketing techniques and an advertising campaign that has failed to deliver for them.