When Sprint merged with Nextel, they accepted a large debt in trade for the spectrum rights and technology patents owned by Nextel. Nextel was not a profitable company, and Sprint has continued to lose money with their service.

Sprint has tried to find ways to upgrade the iDEN data network alongside CDMA without causing a detriment to the customers or their pockets, and it's just not feasible. There is unfortunately no way to upgrade iDEN to 3G data without causing current iDEN phones to lose services. It's been looked into, they tried to close the gap with Hybrids, and then later DCS phones to get the Direct Connect loyal customers to move to the higher quality CDMA network.

It's simply too expensive to try to maintain both networks at maximum capacity, and Sprint has chosen to do away with the network that has the lowest customer satisfaction ratings and causes more tech support calls. While I won't say there are no good things about iDEN, a decision had to be made, and it was.

On that note, I don't have a store location; feel free to visit any SprintNextel sales or service center in the world without worry that we will ever cross paths!