This is beginning to open up nicely! FYI..
Integrated Digital Enhanced Network (iDEN )
Mobile phone and data
iDEN Base Radio at a Cell SiteIntegrated Digital Enhanced Network (iDEN) is a mobile telecommunications technology, developed by Motorola, which provides its users the benefits of a trunked radio and a cellular telephone. iDEN places more users in a given spectral space, compared to analog cellular and two-way radio systems, by using speech compression and time division multiple access (TDMA). Notably, iDEN is designed to operate on narrow Specalized Mobile Radio (SMR) spectrum, rather than cellular frequencies. This necessitates the use of time division duplex, since SMR frequencies are unpaired. Up to six communication channels share a 25 kHz space; where analog two-way systems place only one channel in 12.5 kHz.
In the United States of America there are two public iDEN service providers: Sprint/Nextel and SouthernLINC Wireless. Numerous private systems exist, including one run by ARINC, covering all major airports. Countries which have operating iDEN networks include Canada, Mexico, Brazil, Jordan, Israel, the Philippines, Singapore, South Korea, Saudi Arabia, Japan, El Salvador and China. Roaming is available between Sprint/Nextel in the US, Telus (Canada), and NII (Mexico and S. American markets).
Motorola is committed to support of iDEN technology despite the Sprint buyout of Nextel and Sprint/Nextel's supposed eventual conversion to Sprint's CDMA system. Nextel has stated they will support iDEN until at least 2010, while other iDEN carriers have no forseeable expiration date for their services. iDEN's Push-To-Talk feature is the fastest in the industry.
There is a smaller subset of the iDEN network called "Harmony", With Small System Release 4.0, it supports a maximum limit of 192 sites.
Countries operating iDEN networks
Argentina: Nextel Argentina
Brazil: Nextel Brazil
Canada: TELUS
Chile
China (selected areas)
Colombia Avantel
Dominican Republic Verizon Dominicana
El Salvador
Israel: MiRS
Japan
Jordan: XPress, [1]
Korea
Mexico: Nextel Mexico
Peru: Nextel Peru
Philippines: Next Mobile
Saudi Arabia: Bravo Telecom, [2]
Singapore: DNA Communications
United States: Nextel, SouthernLINC Wireless
" Success seems to be largely a matter of hanging on after others have let go." ~ William Feather
