Replying to: FRUSTRATION with Sprint -- IDEN THINNING? by AlanHenney
Re: FRUSTRATION with Sprint -- IDEN THINNING?
To AllanHenney:
I have the exact same issue with my elderly father. He can't push the buttons on the keypad, but he CAN press the PTT button, which I have programmed to One-Touch Direct Connect. So all he ever has to do is press the PTT button once and I know he needs something. Even if he can't talk over the DC, it alerts me that he needs assitance and I can call the elder care facility where he lives and tell them to get a caregiver into his room.
In our area, the new Sprint Direct Connect seems to be working fairly well, I think it might just be a worthy successor to the original iDEN PTT. Not exactly the same, but overall I think it is a decent replacement, and workable. You should give SDC a chance, because you have 14 days to try it out, and if it doesn't work for you you can cancel that and they will reactivate your old phone & plan.
BTW, if you do try out a CDMA PTT phone make SURE you tell them to keep your original Nextel DC number when they switch over to the CDMA DC phone. The system default is to discard the original iDEN DC numbers (e.g. 178*03964*0) and subsitiute the regular phone number with stars in place of hyphens (e.g. 203*456*7890).
Also, be aware that there apparently are some bad Kyocera DuraPlus phones out there, with speaker and microphone issues that cause poor audio quality.
Just ignore those posters who jump on you and try to tell you that there is no need for PTT. The people who don't actually use PTT just don't get it, and certain of them never will. Also, people who have never had to do elder care have no concept of that world, and they have absolutely no idea how difficult even the simplest things can be for elders, once they begin losing their sight and their manual dexterity. It's best to just gnore their "advice" and their know-it-all attitudes, and the inevitable rude replies they will post.
I have the exact same issue with my elderly father. He can't push the buttons on the keypad, but he CAN press the PTT button, which I have programmed to One-Touch Direct Connect. So all he ever has to do is press the PTT button once and I know he needs something. Even if he can't talk over the DC, it alerts me that he needs assitance and I can call the elder care facility where he lives and tell them to get a caregiver into his room.
In our area, the new Sprint Direct Connect seems to be working fairly well, I think it might just be a worthy successor to the original iDEN PTT. Not exactly the same, but overall I think it is a decent replacement, and workable. You should give SDC a chance, because you have 14 days to try it out, and if it doesn't work for you you can cancel that and they will reactivate your old phone & plan.
BTW, if you do try out a CDMA PTT phone make SURE you tell them to keep your original Nextel DC number when they switch over to the CDMA DC phone. The system default is to discard the original iDEN DC numbers (e.g. 178*03964*0) and subsitiute the regular phone number with stars in place of hyphens (e.g. 203*456*7890).
Also, be aware that there apparently are some bad Kyocera DuraPlus phones out there, with speaker and microphone issues that cause poor audio quality.
Just ignore those posters who jump on you and try to tell you that there is no need for PTT. The people who don't actually use PTT just don't get it, and certain of them never will. Also, people who have never had to do elder care have no concept of that world, and they have absolutely no idea how difficult even the simplest things can be for elders, once they begin losing their sight and their manual dexterity. It's best to just gnore their "advice" and their know-it-all attitudes, and the inevitable rude replies they will post.
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