Sprint lays out their Push-To-Talk plans: iDEN (Nextel) goes buh-bye in 2013

Greg Kumparak

Greg Kumparak is the Mobile Editor at Techcrunch. Greg has been writing for the TechCrunch network since May of 2008. Greg was born just outside of San Jose, and now lives in the East Bay of California. → Learn More

Monday, December 6th, 2010

It’s a sad day for all of the contractors, cable guys, and plumbers of the nation today; this morning, Sprint put a time frame on the impending death of the iDEN network that currently powers its Push-To-Talk network, which so many handy-folk rely on on a daily basis. With the service bleeding customers at a critical rate ever since Sprint snatched up Nextel, we knew it was coming — but now we know when it’ll start…

The phase-out, according to Sprint, will begin in 2013.

On the upside, Sprint also announced that their new, shiny CDMA powered Push-To-Talk network, with its sub-second call connection times, should be rolling out by the third quarter of 2011.

Check out the chart chart comparing the perks of iDEN Push-To-Talk with its CDMA counterpart below:

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