Sprint is bankrupt.  Anyone calling for tech support can easily see why.  
Nextel, especially, is DOOMED.

The biggest sellphone manufacturer on the block has just jumped into
WiMax with both feet, even coming out with a new N810 WiMax internet
device to put on Sprint's so-far-doomed Xohm system in the USA.  Notice
Nokia has already spent money on its first WiMax device, even before the
system has really started, a commitment at first.

40.1% of sellphone sales are now Nokia, across the planet.  Samsung is a
far distant 2nd to Nokia's massive lead.  This is not a bankrupt
manufacturer and major communications giant.

When Nokia went to Navicore for commercial mapping software for its N800
Linux tablet "Navigation Kit", Navicore tried to screw customers with
high prices and only a tiny fraction of the maps (1/2 the continental
USA for US customers)....all locked up on a small Navicore-only SD card
we had to install to get this proprietary bullshit to run...dongle style
of old.  Dispite Nokia's advantages, Navicore balked.

So, problem solved.  Nokia simply swallowed Navicore and came out with
Wayfinder for tablet owners who bought the GPS tablets or external GPS
receiver Navigation kits users can now install on their OWN large SD or
microSD cards, directly...no dongle funny business.  Wayfinder comes
INCLUDED on all new N810 GPS-equipped tablets.  I got a nice email and
web address to download new maps for my old Navicore/Wayfinder of the
whole North American continent, if I wanted them and had the memory card
space.  Having two 16GB memory cards, I installed it on the internal
16GB card, maps and all.

Now, here's Sprint in financial trouble, a target for takeover in
Corporate America.  Nokia has swallowed many companies it wanted, like
Navicore.  Nokia wants a WiMax footprint in America.  Sprint has towers,
WiMax and Xohm.  It makes me wonder if Sprint tries to sh.t on the WiMax
Xohm customers if Nokia will do what it has done in the past....and
simply swallow them whole, which, I think, would be a fantastic thing
for sellphone customers, nationwide.  It would give the manufacturer of
open source Symbian (and Maemo Linux) phones TOTAL CONTROL of a whole
system and stop this disabling/reselling bullshit we've all come to
hate....with a WiMax offering that would simply make sellphones
obsolete, a serious threat that will be resisted at all costs.  Can you
see where that would sell LOTS of "Nokia Cellular" equipment?

It's gonna be fun to watch the next few years....especially at the FCC.

Verizon will never be an open company.....They think they're omnipotent!

Lily Tomlin has made quite a career out of their "insistence"....(c;

"Mr Veedle", her customer victim is everyman in America...

I ran phone patches for years for soldiers, sailors and Marines.  
Sometimes it would run all night.  Southern Bell busted me for it back
when they used to SCAN THE LINES looking for extra loads, other than the
number of ringers you were RENTING from them.  Remember that?  I didn't
have a "coupler" either....too expensive!

The cure was to capacitively couple a high impedance phone patch to the
line so it presented no measurable load to the enforcement bureaucrats.  
The phone patch only needed to present audio to the network so you could
acoustically couple it to the ham set or do it the hard way trying not
to make a ringer load for them to detect and bust...(c;

I sure appreciate your phone patches, too!  I was WB4THE/MM aboard USS
Everglades (AD-24), running phone patches for the crew and my captain
back to Charleston, SC, when we were at sea.  Rig was a Heath HW-101
into a home brew linear running four 813's in parallel.  (graphite
plated 813's had Navy stock numbers...(c;)

The comm officer hated my guts.  It was all my captain's fault.  He'd
show up in Radio Central demanding to talk to Charleston.  The comm
officer would always tell him they couldn't talk to Charleston with the
millions of dollars in equipment installed, amusing my captain
tremendously.  "That's Bullshit!", he'd exclaim, "I was just talking to
my wife on ET1 Butler's little Heathkit ham radio back in the cal lab!"  
We'd be somewhere across the Atlantic at the time, or in the Med.  He
used to ask me, "How much did this radio cost you?"...."Er, ah, $239,
sir.  It was a kit I built."  I had 4 inverted V's (80/40/20/15) strung
from the after king post (mast about 75' high).  Any interference
complaints from Radio while the captain was talking to his wife were met
with a stare that could melt thick steel deck plates...(c;

I also ran a lot of RTTY from the ship and published Reuters news off
10.945 FSK posted on the mess decks.  I rebuilt a Kleinschmidt machine I
found at the salvage yard.  Ship had a full teletype repair shop manned
by machine experts.  1500 watts of RTTY on 14.080 had no problems
reaching out and touching someone....even some painters that got too
close...(c;

What's your call?

73 DE W4CharlestonSouthCarolina

Fess up....Ever build a Blue Box?....(c;

If the mobile keeps transmitting, it can hold the access channel from anyone
else using it, regardless of what the cell does, it's happened, but that's
not the point.  Ma Bell didn't share the same kind of airlink resources that
the wireless carriers do, when you have wired connections, you can disable a
line, or disconnect it, wireless can't.

Regardless, it's just an example from the past.  Check out the ODI
documentation, and let's wait and see what comes in time.

VZW has been total a.ses in the past, so why would anyone think they are
going to have this wonderful corporate turnaround just to satisfy a few FCC
bureaucrats, now?  Oh, they'll mouth the right words and make a few
movements....but, alas, they'll be VERIZON WIRELESS, just like we all know
them....for as long as they can get away with it...

Let's test all this!  We'll get some "approved" Motophones but with
unhobbled Alltel firmware installed in them and no funny business.  Then,
we'll call VZW and have them all put on service with memory cards you don't
need to hack to get the damned pictures onto your PC, MP3 files that play
straight off the cards without hacking or fighting Verizon for access and
NO VCAST or other SELLphone nonsense that obliterates the original Moto
access menus like MOVE or COPY or MAKE RINGTONE or useful, but forbidden,
bluetooth profiles (OPP, OBEX, DUN, FTP, AUDIO REMOTE CONTROL, etc.)

Will they "certify" any device that doesn't conform to the hobbleware
specifications of the company's own Sellphones?  That would be crazy!

I'd like to be wrong about that, too, Steve.  We'll see....(c;