Nextel Could Become Public Safety System

Industry sources have told The Wall Street Journal that Sprint/Nextel has been in talks with Morgan O’Brien about a possible sale of Nextel that O’Brien would broker by assembling investors to fund the purchase. The irony is that O’Brien co-founded Nextel, which Sprint then purchased in 2005 for $35 billion. Lately Nextel customers have been defecting to other carriers by the millions, raising the possibility that Sprint would unload the Nextel portion of its business. The Journal noted that O’Brien founded Cyren Call to push for a nationwide public safety radio network, but a recent auction resulted in no successful bidders for spectrum to create the network. According to the Journal, O’Brien hopes that private investors will buy the Nextel network and frequency assignments, “and use them for public-safety purposes.” He also hopes the group would bid on the spectrum when the FCC holds another future auction for the D Block frequencies that didn’t previously sell. Read about O’Brien’s attempts to convince rural cellular companies to bid on the D Block here.