“Sprint customers rely on Nextel Direct Connect for instant communication at the push of a button, allowing them to do more, faster,” said John Garcia, chief marketing officer for Sprint. “Now Sprint is giving customers the ability to be even more productive with the industry-leading performance of Nextel Direct Connect, plus the speed of Sprint Mobile Broadband and a larger voice calling area. Sprint is proud to build on the 15-year leadership of Nextel Direct Connect with this exciting evolution of the portfolio, featuring the sub-second connectivity to millions of users that our customers depend on.”

Service Features

Powered by Qualcomm’s QChat(R) technology, these new Nextel Direct Connect devices will continue to provide industry-leading performance, while operating on the Rev. A portions of the Sprint Mobile Broadband network (except in Puerto Rico). Compared to other providers, Sprint’s expanded Nextel Direct Connect portfolio will continue to offer significantly faster call set-up times of less than one second and one-to-one interoperability with the world’s largest established push-to-talk community. Features available on these handsets will continue to include:

• Direct Connect(R): Instant one-to-one push-to-talk communication that is interoperable with the millions of existing Nextel Direct Connect subscribers. Direct Connect provides the call set-up times of less than one second that customers have come to rely on to boost productivity and save time and money.
• Group Connect(R): Unique one-to-many capability of Group Connect that helps customers quickly communicate with up to 20 other Nextel Direct Connect users accessing the same QChat technology all at once. Group Connect groups can be created and managed dynamically on the device or online. At this time, not all devices in the Nextel Direct Connect suite of services are capable of offering interoperable Group Connect services.
• Call Alerts: Subscribers will continue to be able to send a repeating PTT Alert to let another Nextel Direct Connect subscriber know they are trying to reach them.