Anybody use Nextel phone in '06/07? Can I ask you some questions?

I’m doing some anecdotal research (for which I have permission) regarding Nextel plans/service in 2006/2007. (Among other things, I need to be able to ask intelligent questions of someone regarding such service in those years.)

I get that I may not get anything useful out of this thread, but it’s worth a shot. One of the things I’m trying to figure out is why this person’s Nextel bill was so high. It was between $250/$350 per month. I think the answer is partially that she used a lot of minutes, and that many of those minutes were with non-Nextel users. If you know anything about this scintillating topic:

Say you had a $65.00/month plan which allowed for 300 free outgoing minutes, all free incoming minutes, and free Nextel/Nextel. Did many other folks at the time also have Nextel, or were Nextel users few and far between such that the free Nextel minutes did not help you too much? How much did outgoing non-Nextel minutes cost? If you spent 30 minutes per day on the phone on outgoing calls (900 per month) that were non-Nextel, such that you had to pay for, say, 600 outgoing minutes per month, was that ridiculously expensive? Would it have been relatively easy to rack up a $250-$350 bill? Thanks for any input!

Was this phone an individual’s phone, or a company’s?

Nextel phones were part of “fleets”. If you designated that all the phones for a company were part of the same fleet, then you could call within the fleet for free. Otherwise Direct Connect and regular voice calls took up minutes. Out of fleet charges could add up quickly.

Ditto if DC (Direct Connect) chirps were happening internationally (e.g between Mexico and the US).

The other thing that could add up fast was Group DIrect Connect (communicating to many people at once).

In 2006, Nextel had a Blackberry (it was blue - so a BlueBerry) so you could also have data charges on there.

Nextel had dozens of rate plans to choose from, so it’s hard to get specific, but I could see usage scenarios where the bill would be $350.

I carried a Nextel phone back then. Many of my friends and virtually all the people I worked with did, too. We were very much into the PTT thing, so actual phone calls were somewhat rare. I never dealt with overages.

I did rack up an insanely large bill one time - I wish I remembered exactly how much. I was on vacation, and was changing planes in Guam. A co-worker of mine and I noticed that the security workers in the airport were carrying Nextel phones. I knew there were iDEN networks outside the US, but had never been anywhere with one. So I turned my phone on, just to see if it roamed onto the network. It did. Then I turned the phone off, and got on my next flight.

Two weeks later, I returned to the States. In those two weeks, every incoming call (that went straight to voice mail, since my phone was turned off) was billed to ME as international long distance. There was a bug in the Nextel system. Happy ending - I called the billing department and explained what happened. They laughed, said they didn’t understand why it happened, but removed all the charges.
I offered to go back to help them debug it. :slight_smile:
So…I guess I can’t help much unless that person was travelling internationally. Was the bill high every month, or was this a one time occurrence?

To answer a few of your questions…

Nextel users were largely people in the construction, and similar industries who valued push-to-talk, but Nextel was a fairly small player compared to AT&T and the other big guys. I actually just pulled up a corporate Sprint/Nextel bill from 2006. Most of the PTT calls were within the fleet, and the regular phone calls were to other Nextel users so they were free. If you forwarded your phone though, you got charged for that. There is a total of 1,935 forwarded minutes which got charged at $387, so 20 cents per minute.

There were also 55 international roaming minutes which got charged at $54.45, so $1/minute. Like I said, most calls were free (including calls after 7PM and weekends), but it looks like “peak” minutes were charged at between 39 and 47 cents a minute retail before any discounts were applied.

International Direct Connect was also about 20 cents per minute.

Directory Assistance calls were $1.79.

Here - Nextel rates 2005

$150 a month gave you 3000 unlimited minutes but only in your home calling area. (see asterisk note) You’d have to roaming like crazy to be pushing $300+ a month.

Actually on reflection you might not have to be roaming like crazy. Roaming rates are much higher so even medium intensive use could easily get you to a big bill outside your home area.