The reason why Nextel is dead is because they are being forced to move off the band that the iDEN network uses. The FCC has mandated that they move off the band completely by 2010 I believe and that is why the buyout of Nextel by Sprint was actually a good idea. I personally loved Nextel, it's the only phone carrier I ever had that had service everywhere, even places you would never expect to find it. The biggest problem with Nextel was the cheap, crippled Motorola phones but I guess they didn't have much choice since iDEN is a Motorola product.