Nextel Brasil is poised to deactivate its legacy iDEN network on 31 March 2018, TeleSintese reports. The company says that investing in the technology is no longer worthwhile given the low demand and high maintenance costs involved. Further, the paucity of new iDEN equipment within the Brazilian market means that the only way Nextel can continue to offer handsets to its customer base is via reconditioning.
According to TeleGeography’s GlobalComms Database, the iDEN network went live in June 1998, using the 800MHz band. The network has been superseded in recent years by Nextel’s W-CDMA and LTE infrastructure.