The service first offered broadband data capabilities, familiar push-to-talk features, rugged and reliable handsets, and a broadening push-to-talk coverage map.
ENGADGET: Where you at? Sprint Direct Connect Now brings push-to-talk to select Android devices
Initially the stock went up almost 10% when Sprint described eliminating its Nextel Push to Talk network and going to a single network structure in the future with considerable cost savings.
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The merged company--to be called Sprint Nextel --promises to mesh the best elements of each company, including Nextel's (nasdaq: NXTL - news - people ) push-to-talk technology and strong corporate customer base, and Sprint's (nyse: FON - news - people ) high-speed data network.
The good news for Clearwire was the display of a chart that showed smaller footprint cell sites that would include base station cards for a multiplicity of services including: LTE (yes, long term evolution), WIMAX, some successor concept that would continue to use the IDEN spectrum in the low bands to keep the push to talk business users happy, and CDMA as well.
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Like all iDen phones it has Push-to-Talk, Java, and aGPS. sadly, like other iDen phones, it lacks Bluetooth or IR.
About thirty years ago, Motorola hooked up with Nextel to bring national two-way push-to-talk service to businesses and government through a public infrastructure network.
This will push Mr Sarkozy into hard talk on immigration, and keep open the possibility of a first-round shock.
For Nextel, the benefit of EV-DO is that handsets already exist, and it is possible to implement push-to-talk functionality, on a par with Nextel's existing service, on an EV-DO network.
Sprint is not financially robust and has an IDen network to turn off stranding push to talk users.
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There has been a lot of ill informed talk in the media about carrier complaints and price push back.
After a substantial marketing push, which had Clooney, the director and star, making the talk-show rounds and magazine covers, the period football comedy from Universal fumbled at the box office.
Nextel's phones include a feature it calls Direct Connect, which lets users push a button, like the CB radios of the '70s, and talk instantly walkie-talkie style with selected users who have similar phones.
Books like The Power of Pull by John Hagel, John Seely Brown and Lang Davison talk about it in terms of the shift from push to pull.
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"Sprint Direct Connect Now expands access to next-generation push-to-talk functionality, " said Michael Wallace, senior vice president and general manager of Qualcomm Internet Services.
ENGADGET: Where you at? Sprint Direct Connect Now brings push-to-talk to select Android devices
Much of the growth can be credited to Nextel's push-to-talk service, the walkie-talkie-like function that allows users to page and call friends instantly with a single button.
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