Nextel still a thing?

[marksroberson]

I recently went to a thrift store in Jasper, AL and got 2 Motorola i500 Phones, and found a charger next to them, I purchased them and took them home and powered them up, the first thing they showed was Welcome to NEXTEL, I had also found a i700 a while back at a thrift store that i picked up and it worked with the some charger, so now I have 3 Working NEXTEL phones with Huntsville Area codes in the phone numbers, there say No Service ( I assume they cancelled the service when they got rid of them) I was thinking they could never be used in any way today (hoping i could use Direct Talk or whatever the Phone-to-Phone PTT thing is, but i didn't find anything about it) Until I saw this on the FCC Recent Listings:
https://www.radioreference.com/apps/db/?fccCallsign=WPAC449
so there may still be hope
But I bet the license is for newer phones
I also thought Sprint or Verizon bought Nextel, Maybe its on the SouthernLINC System

 

[nd5y]

NEXTEL is part of Sprint now.

 

[garys]

No. Sprint bought Nextel, then got rid of the tecnology. At one time they offered PTT on Sprint phones, but it was short lived.

 

[mmckenna]

https://www.radioreference.com/apps/db/?fccCallsign=WPAC449
so there may still be hope
But I bet the license is for newer phones
I also thought Sprint or Verizon bought Nextel, Maybe its on the SouthernLINC System

Nope, no hope, not in the USA. The Motorola iDen trunking protocol used by Nextel is done. There are a few private users in the USA, some use in other countries.
As others stated, Nextel was absorbed by Sprint and they shut the system down. iDen is an old protocol, so I would not expect it to ever return.

As for the towers, Sprint hasn't changed/given up the old Nextel license. Sprint is reusing the frequencies with a different protocol. Reusing the tower sites, also. I've got one at my high site at work. Still says Nextel on the door, all Sprint gear, no more iDen base stations inside the hut.


The guys who originally started Nextel are looking at starting a new nationwide trunked service in the 900MHz band using DMR or some variation of it. Not sure if it's got off the ground yet. They've been buying up 900MHz frequencies en-mass.

 

[Thunderknight]

More about Direct Talk.
https://blogs.n1zyy.com/n1zyy/direct-talk-compatible-phones/

 

[KevinC]

The guys who originally started Nextel are looking at starting a new nationwide trunked service in the 900MHz band using DMR or some variation of it. Not sure if it's got off the ground yet. They've been buying up 900MHz frequencies en-mass.

That would be pdvWireless...

https://www.pdvwireless.com/

https://www.radioreference.com/apps/db/?sid=8344

 

[iMONITOR]

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