RESTON, Va.-Nextel Communications Inc. reported that it plans to end a Flarion Technologies’ Flash-OFDM network trial in North Carolina on June 30. The Wireless Broadband trial was launched last February with a select number of network partners to gauge the scalability of the technology on wide-scale deployment and expanded last April to additional markets as well as to paying subscribers.
Nextel said it eventually garnered around 3,000 customers on the network and that it received a 90-percent positive response from those users. The carrier added that it will provide three free months of service to its current customers and will assist in migrating them to other solutions.
Flarion said it was not surprised by the decision following Nextel’s merger announcement late last year with Sprint Corp., which includes plans to migrate Nextel’s current network to CDMA-based technology. Flarion added that it hopes that the success of the network trial could lead to a possible deal with the combined Sprint Nextel’s 2.5 GHz spectrum holdings.
Nextel said it has not yet made a technology decision for its so-called MMDS spectrum, but noted that it had trialed a number of different offerings.
