Latest BS from Nextel

[apco25]

December 16, 2002
Nextel Snags GSA Mobile Pact
By Ryan Naraine
Internet.Com
http://www.internetnews.com/wireless/ar ... hp/1557651
Reston, Va.-based Nextel Communications (Quote, Company Info) on
Monday announced a $200 million deal with the U.S. General Services
Administration to provide emergency wireless services to all federal
agencies.

Nextel, known for its two-way walkie-talkie devices that double as a
cell phone, said the latest deal would also extend to wireless
communications for state and local agencies that have federal funding.
It specifically gives Nextel the contract to provide nationwide
Enhanced Specialized Mobile Radio (ESMR) services and offer
interoperability advantages for emergency preparedness and response.

Nextel said the deal includes access to wireless phones and
accessories, Nextel's Java-enabled wireless phones, wireless packet
data tools, Nextel Direct Connect long-range two-way walkie-talkie
feature, messaging services, Custom Network Solutions and an emergency
response rental program.

The company plans to deliver the services on its "always on" digital
voice and packet data network.

The latest deal is an extension of a previous pact between Nextel and
the federal government, which was awarded in 1999. Nextel has the
option to extend the deal for two more years with three additional
one-year options, bringing the total potential value up to $1 billion
over the five-year period.

[nmfire10]

I've said it once. I'll say it again. Public Safety. We are our own worst enemy. NaziTel screws up public safety communications so much, and who do we think the biggest up and coming user as a whole of NexTel is? Public Safety. Ugg

[PropellorHead]

Here in southern California law enforcment and fire dept's alike use Nextel service quite extensivly. They come in handy and keep the radio free of non-important traffic. They also work great in communities where poor radio reception is regular. So why is Nextel such the devil on this board?

[Josh]

I wrote on a different message list that these government contracts are a BIG mistake. I just love how it will bring Nextel a few billion dollars of our tax money. I'm glad that the number one public safety interference provider has slipped their clammy grips into the government. This ensures that the FCC will turn their cheek at solving the PS interference issues and also stop them from ever going out-of-business as our friendly government who has invested billions into someone elses infrastructure will roll along and bail them out again at our expense.

Another thing that I hate is that they are trying to get LEIN/NCIC information integrated into their stupid phones too! Sure, it will only be available to "public safety" however, it won't take long for an IMEI or SIM number to leak out and give the nation-wide crime computer network to anyone.

And another screwy thing is their half-assed attempt to build (Motorola) "Military Spec" Next-hell phones. The i30sux look-alike. Another "new" device is integrated GPS, still, more crap than anyone needs.

It's pretty clear to me where public safety and other government agencies communications systems look like, iDUM from NextHell. Where's the VSELP TDMA crap digital scanner at?

-Josh

[apco25]

Nextel makes a nice, SECONDARY communcations tool. That's it, just like a normal cellular or PCS phone. We know this isnt a replacement for fed radios systems, but its just bothersome considering the interference issues and the like at stake here.

Besides all the audio quality and technical stuff I complain about over nextel, I must say that I just don't like the idea of trusting government level info to a private company.

[KitN1MCC]

i heard verizon is rolling out the service jan 1st

[jim]

"They also work great in communities where poor radio reception is regular. So why is Nextel such the devil on this board?"


They work great???? Sure as hell isn't SW Pennsylvania.
They should just add "Fisher-Price" to these things and make them look like a yellow duckie with a big red PTT button.

I love their new ad which states "with it's powerful walkie-talkie feature." I guess this is implying that it must be powerful since it can talk across the state.

As for the audio.....a Kraco CB actually has more inteligible audio than one of these things.

[Josh]

As for the audio.....a Kraco CB actually has more inteligible audio than one of these things.

Amen!

I still can't understand a word on those pieces of crap. I've tried hard too. Where I work, ocasionally idiots come walking in to buy stuff and then out of nowhere "bee beep"....."blah blah bzzzzz fshshsh""beep", "bee bee beep, 'I'm at the store". I openly comment that it sounds like crap. I often wish we had a sign at the door stating people turn their damn Nextel phones off as they are too distracting. People who have their SMR phones glued to their ear using them all the time are just bringin un-needed attention to themselves making a ruckus of beeps and distorted speech.

They should do away with them.

One other thing as food for thought. Nextel boasts and blows out their @ss how many customers they are scamming into using their service "Oh yeah, we expect 19million new users this year" or some other crap. They NEVER mention how many billion users they lose anually. Perhaps this is why they are barely turning a profit after their measly 10 year existence.

-Josh

[RADIOMAN2002]

I just found out that something I heard 2 years ago is true, because of Nexthells interference on 800 mhz, New York State is going to pay a private company for use of the new 700 mhz channels for their new staewide State Police radio system.

[MO_TRASHER]

Not only did the "evil empire" cause problems for PS folks, they also managed to drive numerous "Mom & Pop" shops out of business, or to the verge of bankruptcy. Of course, money hungry people sold their channels to Nextel, so I guess they cut their own throats. Say what you will about the expected numbers of new users and not discussing the ones that leave, I've NEVER heard of any company talking about how poorly they do, just about how great they are. Churn is the biggest problem ALL cellular carriers have.
MRT has a habit of Nextel bashing, and almost always has an article that mentions them.
I work in a "Mom & Pop" who sold out to the "Evil Empire", and if somebody told me ten years ago that things would be the way they are today, I would have said that they were full of **it!
The days of profitable SMR's are gone forever. You can't make a system that'll cover as much territory without very deep pockets.
BTW, we sell their stuff, too. We also use it as well as a 490 MHz LTR SMR system.
As far as I'm concerned, the audio is not great, but, when you look at the size of the speaker they stick in it, I'm not surprised.
You gotta give the devil his due, it does play as advertised.

[phrawg]

Speaker size ? no excuse at all. I just bought a sanyo 4900,
does all and then some, sprintpcs phone and one of its features is a speakerphone. Its little nickel size speaker does very well. I can lay it on the desk and have an excelent clear conversation. It is data rates, demod schemes, etc that make it sound like s***. phrawg

[PropellorHead]

They work great???? Sure as hell isn't SW Pennsylvania.
They should just add "Fisher-Price" to these things and make them look like a yellow duckie with a big red PTT button.


I can't speak for Pennsylvania, but here in Southen California, my Nextel gets excellent reception and never really havea problem with service drops.

Also the whole Fisher-Price comment is stupid. If it's one thing that the Motorola/Nextel phones can take, it's abuse. I see so many cheapo Nokia's and everything else that get dropped once and they become total non-op. The Nextel phones can take a huge beating.

I lost my i90c while helping a friend out at a construction site and it got buried under a couple feet of compressed dirt. 3-4 months later when we were digging the dirt back up to put in the driveway we foudn it. The battery was shot, but I thru a new one in it, and the phone powered up perfectly despite the dirt embedde in the button crevices and all the scratches.

You obviously must not have very much experience with these phones or there service.

Louie

[Pj]

I have to say I have been impressed with my two new Nextel's. Only once did I have a little digital junk come thru, but I was in the basement of the firehouse so it would have been expected. They seem to have built the Connecticut/Western Ma system fairly well. The only thing that I do not like is the "local" direct connect.

Alex has a Nextel phone, and when he comes into my area, I cannot connect to him. I would think it would be nice for an outside area phone to work with local one's when they enter the area.

[alex]

Ok, I'll toss my $0.02.

For 95% of the population out there, direct connect is one of the best solutions under the sun, as long as people throughly understand what it will and will not do. Sadly, most people are annoyed because of the money hungry sales person saying it'll make bread when it will only spread the butter onto the bread.... This is a common problem, but hey - sell sell sell!

We have approx 20ish nextels (mostly Refresh i1000+'s). We want to drop Sprint here like a rabid racoon. However, for some sales people it makes sense to keep them Sprint. We don't have many coverage issues. Everywhere I go (ok, besides Jaymz's house... but that's in the boonies ) I have pretty damn good coverage.

I will say that I don't like this about nextel. Any other company has no problem with you walking into a store, drooling over their phones, going I have this one, I want that one, here's $200 make it happen. Try it at a Nextel dealer. Be prepared to be laughed out the store (I'm serious). They don't like people upgrading, and they don't much like people even chaning plans. Thankfully with SIM based phones it's a non issue. Now the most amusing part is that you can do IMEI swaps (like swithing ESN's) over the phone like you wouldn't believe. I could use a different handset everyday if I wanted to. However, you just can't buy them from nextel. They also hate going from a SIM based phone to a non-sim phone - it is annoying for the reps.

If I so wanted to, I could have swapped Nextel's with PJ the other day when we had lunch, and as long as we swap SIM's Monther N doesn't have any idea. It's kinda a neat thing to be able to do.

To Upgrade/Change a plan is even worse. I'm trying to look at a way to get everyone in the building on the same plan, with the same contract length. That way no one has any special features, and no one can come wining to me that this person has 15 more seconds than the other. They don't do this now, but I need not give them a reason.

The plan I'm on now is $49.99 for 500 daytime, 2500 NW, 2500 DC. No long distance . Stupid Work. When would an IT person have to call long distance? Hmm... maybe to support while he's lying on the floor adjusting the programming on a router? yeah... just maybe. I also have the full $10/month browser/net access add on...

So, I wanted go say - hey look - I want the $39.99 plan that's out now (actually, until midnight tonight) for 450 daytime, unlimited night/weekend time, unlimited direct connect, free long distance. Also, for the 1st year, you get an additional 200 minutes free, as well as if you have the $10/month internet - and additional 100 minutes. So that would bring us up to 750 daytime, unlimited everything else for $49.99. Oh boy oh boy oh boy. Common - FIND me a deal that's as good as this one from another carrier. That's pretty good IMHO.

Can I do it? No.

I'll sign another contract... No...

This is not because they can't do it - If I walked in off the street, as joe blow - I'd get it. Since I'm a current customer, HELLS NO!.

I can get the same for the price I'm paying now + 50 extra minutes with a new contract.... But not the additional 200 bonus minutes.

If I want a new phone number, sure, the'll do it then. (as I would cancel my service, and start fresh...)

Sigh.

-Alex

[talviar]

Ref the Sure as hell isn't SW PA . . .

Can't resist since I reside in SW PA
People rave over "Verizon Coverage" and "Cell One Coverage" in my area. Having carried Verizon, Cell One and Nextel all at once in some coverage tests to see what worked best, I selected Nextel since the coverage was no worse than Verizon or Cell One in my area. (Best bang for the buck when factoring minutes for phone and direct connect feature, 11 units here at work and bill is around $330/month--cheapest we've had in a long time)

As far as Fisher Price Phones, I disagree on this one. I carry a Nextel/Motorola i1000Plus Phone that survived a drop from 45-50 FEET up to a landing on a concrete pad (Coming down a ladder from the elevator room at work, bumped the phone in my pocket and flying phone dropped several landings down). After picking the phone up and putting the battery back on, the only problem I found was one of the pins on the "flip" portion of the phone broke. Phone still worked though. Try that with some other vendors "phones" and see how well they hold up.

[Jack]

Ref the Sure as hell isn't SW PA . . .

Can't resist since I reside in SW PA
People rave over "Verizon Coverage" and "Cell One Coverage" in my area. Having carried Verizon, Cell One and Nextel all at once in some coverage tests to see what worked best, I selected Nextel since the coverage was no worse than Verizon or Cell One in my area. (Best bang for the buck when factoring minutes for phone and direct connect feature, 11 units here at work and bill is around $330/month--cheapest we've had in a long time)

As far as Fisher Price Phones, I disagree on this one. I carry a Nextel/Motorola i1000Plus Phone that survived a drop from 45-50 FEET up to a landing on a concrete pad (Coming down a ladder from the elevator room at work, bumped the phone in my pocket and flying phone dropped several landings down). After picking the phone up and putting the battery back on, the only problem I found was one of the pins on the "flip" portion of the phone broke. Phone still worked though. Try that with some other vendors "phones" and see how well they hold up.

I have to agree on the phones. I have a Motorola I35s with Nextel service and it's the most solid phone I've used in a long time. Nextel has about the best coverage in my area, in my experience as well. The old phone I had was an Ericsson CF888 on Cingular, and AT&T before that. Neither service comes close to Nextel in this area. I get 1000 regular minutes, 5000 night and weekend, 4000 direct connect minutes for 55 bucks per month where with both AT&T and Cingular, 900-1000 minute plans were 100 dollars plus.

[Josh]

Ref the Sure as hell isn't SW PA . . .

Can't resist since I reside in SW PA
People rave over "Verizon Coverage" and "Cell One Coverage" in my area. Having carried Verizon, Cell One and Nextel all at once in some coverage tests to see what worked best, I selected Nextel since the coverage was no worse than Verizon or Cell One in my area. (Best bang for the buck when factoring minutes for phone and direct connect feature, 11 units here at work and bill is around $330/month--cheapest we've had in a long time)

As far as Fisher Price Phones, I disagree on this one. I carry a Nextel/Motorola i1000Plus Phone that survived a drop from 45-50 FEET up to a landing on a concrete pad (Coming down a ladder from the elevator room at work, bumped the phone in my pocket and flying phone dropped several landings down). After picking the phone up and putting the battery back on, the only problem I found was one of the pins on the "flip" portion of the phone broke. Phone still worked though. Try that with some other vendors "phones" and see how well they hold up.

I have to agree on the phones. I have a Motorola I35s with Nextel service and it's the most solid phone I've used in a long time. Nextel has about the best coverage in my area, in my experience as well. The old phone I had was an Ericsson CF888 on Cingular, and AT&T before that. Neither service comes close to Nextel in this area. I get 1000 regular minutes, 5000 night and weekend, 4000 direct connect minutes for 55 bucks per month where with both AT&T and Cingular, 900-1000 minute plans were 100 dollars plus.

Wowee, and I have an amateur repeater in the area with the phone interconnect on it so for $1 per year, I can get unlimited "direct connect" radio service to anyone else with an amateur radio and license, plus, I get free outgoing phone service for $0. Coverage in the area is excellent. Plus, to further enhance things, there's a network of repeaters connected to echolink, so, from a computer, I can talk to people nearly anywhere in the country including areas where Nextel has no coverage whatsoever.

If I have access to a land-line phone somewhere (and where isnt' one these days) I can make whatever coverage I need to with the echolink system.

Not too bad I'd say. I'll keep my $55 a month and after a couple months just buy a new HT. Plus, unlike a digital SMR phone, swearing is not allowed, nor business, but that doesn't bother me.
Nextel is becoming much like amateur radio anyway with more and more non-business idiots using Nextel daily, even when there's a good amateur repeater sitting unused in the area. Plus, I don't know of many cases where amateur repeaters or stations caused interference on Public safety, either. And, if they did, I don't know of any amateurs who'd be unwilling to alleviate the problems themselves.

-Josh

[Jack]

Wowee, and I have an amateur repeater in the area with the phone interconnect on it so for $1 per year

Geez, lighten up Francis. Good for you. I also have unlimited access to multiple amateur repeater auto patch systems, since I helped build some of them, but that doesn't help me when I have to communicate with other people in my business, so what's your point? You're comparing apples and oranges and the two have no relevence to each other.

I can get unlimited "direct connect" radio service to anyone else with an amateur radio and license, plus, I get free outgoing phone service for $0.

Again, you're comparing apples to oranges and when I need to connect to other business users, ham radio helps me about as much as talking into a rock. In addition, that free outgoing service that both you and I get over the amateur repeater is limited to what you can talk about, and I cannot use it to make money, so again, irrelevant.

Coverage in the area is excellent. Plus, to further enhance things, there's a network of repeaters connected to echolink, so, from a computer, I can talk to people nearly anywhere in the country including areas where Nextel has no coverage whatsoever.

Wow, amazing. We also have many repeaters linked with IRLP, and I also own Reflector 921 so I'm very up to date on what these systems can do. If I could use it for business, then wonderful, but I cannot. Nor can I use it to talk to my wife or family, except for my Mom of course, who has been a licensed amateur for 30+ years. Again though, it's all irrelevant to the conversation at hand.

If I have access to a land-line phone somewhere (and where isnt' one these days) I can make whatever coverage I need to with the echolink system.

Neither a landline or autopatch is going to work for me when I'm at worksites, not will it work in many of the areas I travel. If I could somehow figure out how to put my landline in my truck, and develop a system to manage the cable as I drive, then I might consider that kind of a solution.

Not too bad I'd say. I'll keep my $55 a month and after a couple months just buy a new HT. Plus, unlike a digital SMR phone, swearing is not allowed, nor business, but that doesn't bother me.

Your amateur system is perfect for what you do then, but it's not an option for me, or many other people out there. Do I need to mention apples and oranges again? [/quote]

Nextel is becoming much like amateur radio anyway with more and more non-business idiots using Nextel daily, even when there's a good amateur repeater sitting unused in the area.

So what if the regular consumer wants to use a cellphone, or Nextel for that matter. What's your major issue with that? If that's what they want to use, then that's fine with me. I think both services offer great things, but very different things as well. Amateur radio is great as a hobby, and as a emergency services tool, but it doesn't help my business. If I want to talk to my wife, and beep all over the place, then so be it. Does carrying your HT, looking cool, make you feel like a man or something? Do you somehow think you're too good for users of other systems? I carry my JT1000, GP300s and other radios all the time, but I also have an open mind, and I don't look down on people who don't use those radios. Chill out man.

Plus, I don't know of many cases where amateur repeaters or stations caused interference on Public safety, either.

Maybe not, but then again, how do you know that some systems don't interfere? I've seen it many times in the past, because I've been involved in projects trying to clean that kind of thing up. I've also seen some amateurs actually transmit on the public safety frequencies directly, as well as other frequencies they shouldn't have been on. I've seen hams using non type accepted equipment on GMRS. I've seen all kinds of things. Granted, the amateur radio community does a good job of policing their own service, but if you think for a minute that amateur radio systems haven't caused problems, then you're mistaken.

So again, I say quit comparing apples to oranges. The two services are completely seperate from each other and have completely different uses, so comparing them in my opinion is a waste of time.

In closing, I have seen your posts in the past and I know how much you hate Nextel. To be honest, I don't really care either. I love working amateur radio, and I enjoy the Nextel service I receive. Mainly because it helps me make money.



-Josh[/quote]

[FFCARTER46]

hey,

i work at a volunteer fire dept.! i dont know what we would do w/o nextels! for those folks at the fire dept who dont have portables these come in handy! almost everyone at the fire dept has a nextel and they are great communications when it comes to finding addresses and fireground communications! people use them to find out whose in route to the station to pick up a truck, whose in route POV and things of that nature! living in a rural community they really come in handy when it comes to finding those houses that sit 2 miles back in the woods and havent clearly marked there mailboxes! also great when it comes to calling sizeups! just my $0.02!

[mancow]

OK, like anyone cares but I have to put in my bit as well.

All staff and detectives have nextel plus the sargeants on our dept.
They work well as long as you are dickering about where to have lunch.

The audio is pure S*** I've been trying to tout the positive aspects of DES motorola radios etc.... but it all falls on deaf ears. Nextel's hook is it's handyness. But of course people start relying on it and that's where things go wrong.

I personally find it a nifty handy perk to the cellular service but hate the fact that people try to replace the existing comm system with it.


mancow

[Jack]

Mancow,

I definately agree with what you're saying. Nextel serves a purpose and should be only for a certain type of customer. My opinion is that the customers whould be business users, consumers, or public saftey users (non safety comms only). I think it's a very bad idea to use this system for your police deparment dispatch channels etc. Not good at all.

I also agree that the audio is tinny as hell, and comes nowhere close to the JT1000 on GMRS etc, but I don't care as long as I can understand what the person on the other end is saying. I'm not in for hi-fi sound. It's a tool that helps me make money, plain and simple and I don't think it should be anything more, or anything less than that.

[Jack]

Gee, I thought Josh would have answered me by now since he's still whining in other threads about it. Come on man, respond.