Sprint-Nextel Rumored to Be Selling iDen

The latest news on the web shows that Sprint-Nextel Corporation is thinking about selling the iDen wireless network, the company purchased about three years ago, in 2005. This action announces itself to be a rather difficult one, since the value of the network has dropped almost 80 percent in the meantime, to a current estimated value of $5 billion.

The public safety and construction workers are those that use the iDen network, and Sprint has had difficult times working on the integration of the network with its own services. Sprint-Nextel managed to finally complete the integration, but this means that any purchaser will also have difficulties in the attempt to reverse Sprint's integration. A walkie-talkie feature, billing, broadcast towers and customer service have been integrated by Nextel. $35 billion were paid by Sprint three years ago for Nextel Communications, and millions of customers and a lot of revenue have been lost by the company since then.

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) seems to be putting a lot of pressure on Sprint at the moment for the reservation of a critical part of the iDen wireless channels for the deployment of a national emergency communications network. The rumors say that the company to have showed some interest in acquiring the iDen network would be NII Holdings Inc., a Latin American service provider which is already using iDen's technology.

Sprint has been in a continuous decline in the latest period of time, losing a huge amount of money, and the analysts' predictions indicate that the company is going to spin off all the businesses that can be sold. The second quarter put Sprint in a $23 billion debt. The company also registers cash and marketable securities of $3.5 billion. Sprint took a $29.7 billion depreciation for most of the value of Nextel in its fourth quarter.