Kyocera DuraXT / DuraPro

Where I am located (CA), we went through a two-week period of problems with iDEN signal a couple of months ago as they were converting some of the local towers' resources from iDEN to CDMA, but since that period the iDEN signal has been as good as it has ever been (I've been with Nextel continuously for ten years).

Since this is a highly poplulated region, with quite a few companies still using Nextel, that has probably acted in our favor and although they have converted some antennas from iDEN to CDMA, they have not actually completely shut down any iDEN towers here. Or if they have shut down any of the original iDEN towers, they have made up for it by increasing signal strength on the remaining antennas, because overall the iDEN service here has been as good as ever.

About a mile from where I work (our company is all Nextel+Sprint), I noticed a crane taking down the bank of 9 Nextel antennas off of a tower that I know for certain is a Nextel iDEN tower (I know because of Nextel/Motorola's ability for the user to find the exact GPS location of the tower to which they are connected, and the use of Google Maps to plug the lat/lon coords into to locate the tower). It was interesting to me that even though the orignal iDEN antennas were off the mast, I was still getting four bars of signal strength in that area. So somehow they had kept up iDEN signal while removing the original bank of 9 antennas from the mast. I'll re-check signal strength & antenna location on Monday when I get back to the office, and look over to that mesa to see what the new Sprint antennas look like.

I know it is unstoppable at this point, but, man oh man, I am really going to miss Nextel & iDEN come next June