Sprint (News - Alert) Nextel CEO Dan Hesse says the firm is intent on turning around the Nextel side of the business and is not looking for a buyer for the unit. Hesse, speaking to Wall Street analysts at the Goldman Sachs Communicopia event, said that Sprint has been looking at all options for improving its business, including the sale of its Nextel business. But it appears Nextel has not gotten offers Sprint considers worth taking.

 

“We don’t have to sell the iDEN business,” Hesse said. "If we get an offer that is compelling, that is de-levering and all sorts of other things, we will consider it." Given that apparent appetite, it appears Sprint either has not gotten offers to buy Nextel, or considers the bids unattractive.

 

Given that Nextel operates on what now is an unusual radio format, the pool of buyers who might logically be interested — at least for purposes of supporting an existing mobile business — is fairly limited.

 

NII Holdings (News - Alert) is among the most-obvious buyers, as it used the iDen technology to support more than 5.4 million customers in selected Latin American markets. Principal operations are in major business centers and related transportation corridors of Argentina, Brazil, Mexico, Peru, and Chile. NII's corporate headquarters are in Reston, Virginia, where Nextel also was headquartered.

 

In the United States, SouthernLINC Wireless also uses iDEN. Other countries with operating iDEN networks include Canada, Argentina, Peru, Mexico, Brazil, Jordan, Chile, Israel, Philippines, Singapore, Saudi Arabia, Japan, El Salvador, China, India and Guatemala.

 

When Sprint bought Nextel, Nextel had the highest average revenue per user in the business, based on its enviable base of business customers, with a high concentration of users in construction and other verticals. The Nextel push-to-talk feature, then unique in the business, was the attraction.

 

Since then, Nextel customer churn has been the chief cause of Sprint's overall customer defection problem. But observers say Nextel has fixed some of its operational problems and now is rolling out new handsets better positioned for a market that increasingly sees "phones as fashion" and expects many more features than it used to. 

 

Sprint in the past has said it will continue to support iDEN until 2010, when a conversion to the CDMA platform used by the Sprint network is supposed to commence. Some observers also say the iDEN network could form the foundation for a national "first responders" network that otherwise is envisioned for new 700-MHz spectrum the Federal Communications Commission (FCC (News - Alert)) is auctioning.

 

That would be something of a return to its roots. Nextel began life using frequencies used to dispatch taxicabs, police, firefighters or delivery drivers. It then created a new "specialized mobile radio" service. Originally known as "Fleet Call," Nextel's push-to-talk capability was a logical outgrowth of its legacy in the fleet dispatch business.

 

Obviously, some of those same mobile radio features would be useful for a first responder network as well.