Why did nextel and sprint merge?
The simple answer is economics. Before the merger was announced, Verizon wireless was the 800lb gorilla, the major player in by a long shot in the industry. All of the other carriers knew this and so consolidation started taking place, first it was Cingular bought AT&T. All of a sudden, there were two major players in the industry. Sprint was a medium sized player and Nextel a small player by comparison. Nextel and Sprint would not have been able to compete on their own. Nextel was very strong in the business segment of the industry and had a very strong business feature in the direct connect (walkie talkie) feature of their phones. Sprint had a huge consumer base in their business with the video features of their phones. It was only good business sense to combine their efforts into one company to compete along side Verizon & AT&T/Cingular. There is also spectrum issues also involved.
