Nextel

Remember Republic Wireless?

The wireless service, which made headlines for its cut-rate $19 unlimited voice, text message, and data plan that relied more on Wi-Fi networks than cellular ones, opened and quickly closed its beta last year. Now the company is ready to reopen its beta to a new wave of customers, and has added the Motorola Defy XT to its lineup, Engadget first reported.

Republic Wireless captured a lot of attention for its plan, which many believed would be disruptive to the more traditional contract wireless plans, and even the less expensive prepaid plans. But the company has gotten … Read more

Verizon Wireless got fat off the customers that left Sprint Nextel's iDEN network over the past few years.

That's according to Sprint CEO Dan Hesse, who told investors today that Verizon has nabbed half of the customers who left the ailing Nextel service over the past few years. AT&T grabbed roughly a fifth of the departing customers, while Sprint got a quarter.

"The iDEN (Nextel) network was a big source of customers for our rivals, particularly Verizon," Hesse said.

More recently, Sprint has shifted its strategy and rededicated its resources into winning back Nextel … Read more

Sprint Nextel saw its second-quarter loss widen because of ongoing costs related to the shutdown of its Nextel network, its Network Vision upgrade project, and its investment in Clearwire.

The Overland Park, Kansas, wireless carrier posted a loss of $1.37 billion, or 46 cents a share, on revenue of $8.84 billion. A year ago, it reported a loss of $863 million, or 29 cents a share, on revenue of $8.31 billion.

One-time costs include 26 cents a share for Network Vision, 6 cents a share related to the shutdown of Nextel towers, and 7 cents a share … Read more

Isis, a joint venture among Verizon Wireless, AT&T, and T-Mobile USA, will likely start trials of its mobile-payment service in August, according to a person familiar with the launch plans.

The August target, however, isn't set in stone. CNET has gotten indications elsewhere that the timing may change. A representative for Isis only said the service would begin trials in Salt Lake City and Austin, Texas, this summer, pushed back from the prior forecast of a mid-year launch.

Isis will join Google Wallet in its attempt to get people to start paying at cash registers with their … Read more

Verizon Wireless again widened its lead when it comes to 4G LTE coverage, blanketing nearly six times as many cities as all of its competitors combined.

The carrier told CNET today that it will launch in 33 new markets tomorrow, bringing the total number of markets to 337. The company is on track to hit its goal of 400 markets by the end of the year.

With virtually every wireless carrier committed to LTE, the breadth of coverage has become the stuff of bragging rights. Verizon, which was the first national carrier to launch LTE, has consistently remained ahead, with … Read more

Verizon Wireless' new family share plan has gotten lots of knickers in knots. But is the new plan really as bad as some people fear it is for consumers?

Last week, Verizon's new family share plans went into effect for the carrier's new customers. The plans give subscribers unlimited voice and text messaging and allow people to share buckets of data between different people on the same share plan and among multiple devices on the same plan. But the plans have also caused a lot of confusion -- and outraged many existing Verizon customers.

In this edition of … Read more

In today's show, we test Google's new operating system, chirp goodbye to Nextel, and pay our Russian bills with green pigs:

The reviews are out for Samsung's new Chromebook and Chromebox, running on the newly updated Chrome OS. And the bottom line is that it's better than the last version, but still not all that impressive. (Especially since the Chromebook has limited capabilities and costs more than a tablet.)

The Nextel network will officially be killed-off in June of 2013, and Sprint is pushing Nextel customers to use Sprint Direct Connect devices.

There's a new … Read more

Sprint Nextel set a firm date on when it will kill off the Nextel part of its business.

The carrier said today that it would completely shut off its Nextel network, which uses a technology called iDEN best known for its walkie-talkie capability, on June 30, 2013. The company will begin alerting customers on Sunday.

The date marks the end of troubled era in Sprint's history, a period in which the company struggled to integrate the Nextel assets after an ill-fated merger between the two wireless giants. The phasing out of iDEN is part of Sprint's larger Network … Read more

Dinged for poor customer service in the past, AT&T has been staging a rebound.

The carrier scored a grade of 69 out of 100 this year in a report out today from the American Customer Satisfaction Index. That proved to be a 5 percent boost from 2011, putting it on par with T-Mobile, which lost 1 percent.

Customer satisfaction was low for both AT&T and T-Mobile last year amid all the merger troubles, but AT&T at least was able to recover.

"AT&T is within striking distance of the industry lead for … Read more