Interesting you should say that S-N will be plowing money back into the iDEN side. I hope you are right, but I am fearful that will not happen.

First, S-N is hurting financially due to so many lost customers, and of course this is the worst economy in at least two generations, which makes matters look fairly dire. The US consumer has snapped his wallet shut, big-time, and is waiting for the storm to pass. And even those few who are spending are going for pure value and not taking any risks, and we al know that S-N is really a risk compared to VZ or ATT or even T-Mo.

Second, I recently spoke to the Nextel NETS engineer in my area, asking when they would put up a new cell-site in my neighborhod to cover the iDEN coverage hole around my house, and he stated that there is no budget for any iDEN network growth right now.

Taking those two things into account, I fear that iDEN will remain as it is now for at least a couple of years, and by that time who knows what might happen. But I do hope your information is more current than mine, and S-N actually does begin to improve the iDEN experience. I agree with you that if they could get it back to th levels of late 2004 we loyal Nextel customers will probably stick with them. But my contract is up in four months, and I am studiously avoiding anything that will require me to re-up my contract with Sprint-Nextel. If things are still going south next April, I will have to seroiusly consider jumping to Verizon (ugh!).

But I hope you are right and my info is wrong.