IDEN
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Template:Table Mobile phone standards
- The title of this article is incorrect because of technical limitations. The correct title is iDEN.
iDEN (Integrated Digital Enhanced Network) is a mobile communications technology, developed by Motorola, which provides its users the benefits of a trunked radio and a cellular telephone. Nextel is the largest US retailer of iDEN services. iDEN places more users in a given spectral space, compared to analog cellular systems, by using time division multiple access (TDMA). Six communication channels share a 25 kHz space; some competing technologies place only one channel in 12.5 kHz.
Data (such as paging and text messaging) and voice communications are supported by iDEN.
In order to provide high data rates for packet data, Nextel started to develop a 2.5G technology called WiDEN.
WiDEN was a planned expansion on the iDEN system, where instead of using a normal 25 kHz channel for packet data, it would encompass 4 carriers (100 kHz) into one channel. This would have allowed download speeds of 96 kbit/s, which is comparable to the average CDMA2000 speeds from American competitors Sprint and Verizon.
Following Nextel's merger with Sprint, iDEN will be phased out, to be folded into Sprint's network which employs CDMA2000 (voice and data via 1xRTT) and (in the testing phase) EV-DO.
iDEN is a technology with no clear path for high speed wireless data. As part of the Sprint Nextel merger, 1xEV-DO will become the infastructure for 3G data to both Sprint and Nextel customers, as part of the transition to CDMA2000.