Sprint, T-Mobile Vow Merger Won’t Repeat Nextel Havoc

Sprint’s plan to merge with rival T-Mobile in a $26 billion deal has triggered memories of dead phones and spotty service for some longtime Sprint customers, but the companies say such pitfalls are in the past. The customers are recalling the havoc of Sprint’s 2005 merger with Nextel Communications, much of it driven by the companies’ differing technologies. It took nearly eight years and billions of dollars to wind down Nextel’s so-called iDEN system—known for its chirpy push-to-talk cellphones—before all customers were taking calls on Sprint’s network. In the process, more than 10 million customers of the combined company left. Some of Sprint’s past problems stemmed from the piecemeal development of US wireless networks in the early 2000s.