I was scratching my head several months ago when SouthernLINC announced that they had signed a nationwide iDEN roaming agreement with Sprint so that SouthernLINC's regional customers could roam on Nextel iDEN nationwide. Why bother I thought, when Sprint had already announced the sunsetting of iDEN in 2013?

I stumbled across this article, wherein the CEO of SouthernLINC explains his strategy:
http://www.fiercewireless.com/ctialive/story/souther ... »

I actually called SouthernLINC customer service and asked what is going to happen to their nationwide roaming when Sprint shuts down iDEN in 2013, but the SouthernLINC CS agent couldn't answer that question. I suppose that the interoperability of "SDC-II" (Sprint's "new" CDMA Direct Connect) with iDEN will allow SouthernLINC customers to still PTT nationwide, but I assume they would lose voice and data roaming when Sprint's iDEN towers are shut down.

It'll be interesting to see what SouthernLINC does long-term.