Nextel Communications, Inc. was an American wireless service operator that merged with and ceased to exist as a subsidiary of Sprint Corporation, which would later be bought by T-Mobile US and folded into that company.

Nextel in Brazil, and formerly in Argentina, Chile, Peru, the Philippines, and Mexico,[3] is part of NII Holdings, a stand-alone, publicly traded company not owned by Sprint Corporation.

Nextel Communications traces its roots to the 1987 foundation of FleetCall by Morgan O'Brien, Brian McAuley, Chris Rogers, and Peter Reinheimer.

Telecommunication lawyers Morgan E. O'Brien and Chris Rogers and investment bankers Brian McAuley and Peter Reinheimer founded FleetCall in 1987.

Other early investors and employees include Mark Warner, now a United States Senator from Virginia, and Jack Markell, the former Governor of Delaware.

The founders chose the name "FleetCall" because the company's network used the 800 MHz Specialized Mobile Radio frequencies designated by the Federal Communications Commission for use in fleet dispatch.

The core of the business model was to buy these fleet dispatch frequencies from existing operators at a substantial discount when compared to the cost for the equivalent bandwidth available via auction from the Federal Communications Commission.

These "non-cellular" frequencies were made usable for a consumer and business wireless voice telephone service with the iDEN technology developed by Motorola, which some observers at the time said would not be practical.

The close relationship had yielded the Integrated Digital Enhanced Network (iDEN) protocol, which uses a time-division multiple access (TDMA) technology.

The technology uses the 900 MHz ISM band and provides ten FHSS channels for an off-network push to talk communications between individual phones that are not necessarily in range of wireless towers.

In October 2005, in order to free up network capacity for cellular calls due to rebanding, Sprint removed the ability to connect to the WiDEN service from all Nextel towers.

[6] Due to many underlying maintenance and life cycle issues within the legacy public safety systems of the United States, co-channel interference was a common occurrence within 800 MHz band.

The use of contiguous spectrum allows for simple filters to be installed to protect public safety radio systems from interference, which is currently impossible under the existing mixed allocations in the 800 MHz band.

Nextel replaced R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Company cigarette brand Winston after it spent 33 seasons being NASCAR's Cup Series title sponsor.