T-Mobile Direct Connect

[Jim1348]

With Sprint having Direct Connect and now being a part of T-Mobile, will Direct Connect vanish or will it have a place on the T-Mobile network?

[Serial Port]

I can't say with certainty, but I strongly suspect Direct Connect to be quietly retired along with the Sprint name.

[tekfranz]

Zello is a great alternative.


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[DRNewcomb]

I have not seen any mention of Direct Connect by anyone at T-Mobile, which indicates to me that they have no interest in the service.

[cr0w]

for the regular consumer, there is little to no demand on this. For the pros, t-mobie is partnered with ESChat ... (FirstNet and military interoperability), check out eschat, but I doubt they will do something native. Downloading a free app is probably best.

[Haas_Dave]

for the regular consumer, there is little to no demand on this. For the pros, t-mobie is partnered with ESChat ... (FirstNet and military interoperability), check out eschat, but I doubt they will do something native. Downloading a free app is probably best.

Yup. Since ESChat can be integrated with two-way LMR systems, it is now preferred over carrier/vendor-locked solutions like Nextel/Sprint Direct Connect was.

Direct Connect as a hardware based service is pretty well dead for regular consumers.


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[brad15]

Sprint ruined any remaining DC accounts/loyalty leftover from Nextel with the poor handling of the merger. It's just time to let that horse ride into the sunset, and for the few remaining accounts, i'm sure an updated Sonim XP or DuraMax with something like ESChat built in would suffice

Had sprint handled that merger correctly and been able to keep those high ARPU accounts, we may be looking at a reverse (Sprint acquiring T-Mobile) but that ship has long sailed and most DC customers have moved on.

[DRNewcomb]

Had sprint handled that merger correctly ....., we may be looking at a reverse (Sprint acquiring T-Mobile) ......

I think Sprint screwed up on a lot of fronts (e.g. WiMAX) that would have needed to change, but yeah, I get your point. I wonder how much of Sprint's budget was drained off by the costs of domestic roaming?

[brad15]

I think Sprint screwed up on a lot of fronts (e.g. WiMAX) that would have needed to change, but yeah, I get your point. I wonder how much of Sprint's budget was drained off by the costs of domestic roaming?

Well, WiMax was derived from Nextel - I actually have a Nextel-branded PC card here I got from work to test it around DC, I should dig it back out sometime. It went well with my i930 haha

Thing is, at the time - data was not big yet and would not be for a few years. Had Sprint treated Nextel customers like the "premium" customers they were (they paid a HIGH ARPU for just voice service), and not treated them like normal Sprint clientele - things could have came around differently.

Sprint just did not know how to manage a "premium" base - and they lost a TON of customers over it.

Had they managed that correctly and used that good ARPU to upgrade the network.. they could have had cash to properly deploy NV, but they mishandled all of that, and like a domino effect fell far behind.

[Theghostlad82]

Well, WiMax was derived from Nextel - I actually have a Nextel-branded PC card here I got from work to test it around DC, I should dig it back out sometime. It went well with my i930 haha

Thing is, at the time - data was not big yet and would not be for a few years. Had Sprint treated Nextel customers like the "premium" customers they were (they paid a HIGH ARPU for just voice service), and not treated them like normal Sprint clientele - things could have came around differently.

Sprint just did not know how to manage a "premium" base - and they lost a TON of customers over it.

Had they managed that correctly and used that good ARPU to upgrade the network.. they could have had cash to properly deploy NV, but they mishandled all of that, and like a domino effect fell far behind.

While there is truth to this, Nextel would of died off on their own without sprint, so it’s really a moot point. Nextel isn’t innocent in all of this, they sold sprint a mess of problems, and Timmy D took the money and ran post merger. Good on them for getting what they got, but Nextel was going to die with or without sprint.

[brad15]

Nextel was just spectrum constrained. Sprint opened them up to having the proper amount of spectrum to deploy a better data network than iDen could ever be.

Had Sprint properly managed a network transition early on, had a solid DC product, and solid data network.. they would have came out far better.. again, had they had an actual plan to manage and keep those high ARPU customers, they would have had money to do NV on a scale that T-Mobile is doing network modernization/5G today.

BUT they failed at that, treated nextel customers like trash with no real migration plan... and then it all fell apart.

[baaadandy]

I wonder how much of Sprint's budget was drained off by the costs of domestic roaming?

I remember being told YEARS ago it was well over a million dollars per day, and that particular year was IIRC $412 million-ish.

Absolutely believe it, and near the end of the days EVDO was the primary data carrier for Sprint it was probably way higher. If anyone on Sprint here still remembers, there were the 00001 PRLs that were available to let you perma-roam on VZW, full EVDO speeds. Push the PRL, gain the VZW footprint, pay Sprint prices.

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[brad15]

I remember being told YEARS ago it was well over a million dollars per day, and that particular year was IIRC $412 million-ish.

Absolutely believe it, and near the end of the days EVDO was the primary data carrier for Sprint it was probably way higher. If anyone on Sprint here still remembers, there were the 00001 PRLs that were available to let you perma-roam on VZW, full EVDO speeds. Push the PRL, gain the VZW footprint, pay Sprint prices.

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Well that was also Sprint's fault for not building out. Again as I pointed out above.. a domino effect.

Had they did a proper integration early on, moved everyone to qChat right away, and leveraged that 800MHz even in a CDMA environment early.. they could have done well.

qChat failed because most of Sprint's network was T1 backhauled and could not handle more than 1xRTT data reliably.. I remember when my phone was swapped from Nextel to Sprint (I worked for both) and Sprint was just atrocious for coverage compared to iDen thanks to 1900MHz. It was not until NV really hit a market it was really acceptable for service again.

[Theghostlad82]

Nextel was just spectrum constrained. Sprint opened them up to having the proper amount of spectrum to deploy a better data network than iDen could ever be.

Had Sprint properly managed a network transition early on, had a solid DC product, and solid data network.. they would have came out far better.. again, had they had an actual plan to manage and keep those high ARPU customers, they would have had money to do NV on a scale that T-Mobile is doing network modernization/5G today.

BUT they failed at that, treated nextel customers like trash with no real migration plan... and then it all fell apart.

Nextel was also cash restrained. They didn’t have the money to refarm the esmr band ( which some of those licensees to this day aren’t clear to be used in border cities) and they didn’t have the money to change over to a cdma based network (which was their goal). While sprint sped up the decline of Nextel, those customers were leaving Nextel regardless. Nextel was a dead man walking when sprint bought them. While sprint gets a lot of flak for how they handled Nextel post merger, and it’s earned won’t disagree, the biggest mistake they made was not properly addressing the company pre merger to see exactly what they were buying. Nextel was almost in the same boat as metro was, metro didn’t have the cash to convert their entire network to LTE and didn’t have the cash to acquire any more spectrum to compete. The difference is T-Mobile knew this and paid accordingly for the brand and it’s assets, sprint did not.

[tekfranz]

...they didn’t have the money to change over to a cdma based network (which was their goal).

I thought Nextel’s next step was WiDEN Motorola’s 3G iDEN solution?


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