Amen....exactly the way it has been written in other documents put out
over the last few months.
It's the only logical way for Sprint/NEXTEL to have a usable system and
keep their
customers happy.  Thanks for an informative post.

To be more specific, both and Sprint and Nextel share the same dirty
little secret: not all of their network is corporate-owned.  And this is
something neither company really wanted customers to know, but the
merger has pretty much let the cat out of the bag.

When Sprint and Nextel were just getting started, they both decided
(separately, of course) that it would be in their best interests, to
focus on large metropolitan areas and build out corporate-owned networks
there, and then allow "affiliates," or separate wireless holding
companies, to build out second and third-tier locations using their own
financial resources.  Sprint and Nextel would then market their
respective affiliates' areas as part of one big happy wireless family.
In return for the doing all the grunt work, the affiliates would be able
to market themselves under the Sprint brand (or Nextel for Nextel's
affiliates), let Sprint or Nextel handle all of the back-room functions
like billing, distribution and customer service issues, and roll in the
dough whenever a customer "roamed" on the affiliates network.  To the
end user of course, this was all transparent and the word "roam" was
never uttered, but behind the scenes, roaming revenue would changes
hands between the corproate parents and their affiliates.

This worked wonderfully for Nextel throughout its life, which as far as
I know had a decent relationship with Nextel Partners, Inc (the company
that served as Nextel's affiliate and owns all of the gear in rural and
less-than-prime metro locations).  But for Sprint, things weren't so
great.  While it worked out fine at first, Sprint kept trying to pay the
affiliates less and less for every minute that a Sprint user "roamed" on
an affiliate.  The affiliates fought back in their own ways: some bought
smaller affiliates to increase their negotiating clout with Sprint, some
sued Sprint in court, and others declared bankruptcy, putting Sprint at
risk of losing those assets and network coverage unless they ultimately
bailed out the affiliate and purhcased its assets.

Then came the merger, and all hell broke loose.  Both Nextel and Sprint
had clauses in their affiliate agreements that stated that neither
company would "compete" with their respective affiliates.  This was
basically a form of affiliate job security, ensuring that the parent
company wouldn't muscle in on a market and leave an affiliate out in the
cold so long as the agreement was in effect.  The problem is, the merger
means that the "new Sprint" now has a LOT of Sprint-owned network
coverage that overlaps with Nextel Partners, and a LOT of Nextel-owned
network coverage that overlaps with Sprint's many affiliates.  In the
affiliates' eyes, this constitutes a violation of the noncompete clauses
now that both are essentially one company.

So now, shareholders of Nextel Partners are forcing the new
Sprint-Nextel to valuate their shares and buy them out, to the tune of a
billion or so bucks.  Likewise, the many and varied Sprint affiliates
are each doing their own thing: some are pressuring Sprint to buy them
out to the tune of another few billion dollars or so (and at least two
have succeeded), and others are suing in an attempt to undo the merger
outright.

Until these legal issues are resolved, Sprint is limited in where it can
leverage the benefits of the merger, and how it can make the networks
appear unified.

Now in their defense, Sprint and Nextel aren't the only companies to
"exaggerate" their coverage using affiliates and preferred "transparent"
roaming agreements.  Nearly all US carriers do this.  However, Sprint
and Nextel were the only two companies who preferred not to *tell* you
what was going on.  On Verizon, Cingular or T-Mobile, you're often told
when you're on an "extended" network.  But Sprint never told its
customers that places like parts of Texas, Louisiana, Arizona, New
Mexico, Kansas, Oregon and Washington (just to name a few) were actually
networks run by third-party companies who, because their ONLY business
was to pretend to be Sprint or Nextel, often ended up in some very
precarious financial positions (some even coming very close to closing
their doors and turning off their networks).

The other carriers (Verizon, Cingular, et. al.) also preferred a
preferred roaming-style agreement rather than an outright affiliate
arrangement.  This way they can appear to provide "extended" coverage by
contractin with other cell carriers, but don't end up in a legal bind
when Cingular buys a company like AT&T Wireless, or when Verizon chooses
to either buy out a mom & pop or build out a new network on its own.

Scott Wrote:

you are correct, it was 2.5 GHz and both sprint and verizon both use
VOIP as there two-way systems.  sprints is pretty fast but not as fast
as nextel and the verizon version is very slow.