Frontline feedback: Great, great, great!
I like to maintain a fresh dialogue with a many contacts as I can regarding Nextel's progress in the field.
Indications here in Chicago seem to be "great". The new phone is being received extremely well. As for competition - AT&T's 7 cent plan, etc. - the question is....what competition? Sure, they are "hearing about "it", but this "it" is not impacting sales one iota. Nextel's Direct Connect is still, far and away the tool of that differentiates them from the rest of the pack.
What's always interesting to measure is the extent to which referrals continue to drive new sales. Referrals seem to be as strong as ever among those I talk to in the field.
My guess is that January is ahead of plan. As for the extra debt, employment outsourcing and renewal of the service bureau service and billing contracts - seem to be all signs of a growing company that's making a mark.
I spent 2-3 hours today with engineers and marketing guys from Seimens AG. We talked about CDMA, GSM and TDMA. They were well aware of Motorola'a technology - even acknowledged that Nextel's capacity is 2-3 times greater as a result of the emerging CDPD technologies - this is something I will have to dig in further to understand, but it sounded good. Sure, longer term they saw CDMA emerging stronger, but even before that happens all the diverse technologies will handshake under UMTS.
Seimens recently signed a deal with Microsoft for Windows CE - this as opposed to the more powerful trend toward Java - Nokia and Motorola recently sealed deals with Sun for Java.
What does this mean? Not sure. Because Gates owns some of Teledesic, my guess would be McGaw would go with Windows CE. Whether Java or CE, the market for apps linking Nextel's units with handheld data devices for the purpose of canvassing and recording field data will be big. I'd like to begin to see Nextel rollout product that links with apps that serve mobile data gathering reps.
The folks from Seimens said "Nextel will make a lot of money simply because of their ability to attract users to their network." The more users, the greater the value of the network, etc. As for wireless versus landline public/private switched or IP - they see landline data networks exploding over the next several years even as digital wireless networks proliferate.
Sorry for the long wind. It appears we are solidly on track just waiting for the dam to fill up until the next pop to the upside through the old highs.
Good luck! |
