Nextel Wireless Broadband

Steve Stroh has a great critique of Nextel's rollout. Pricing isn't great since it just matches standard broadband costs (via the current special). Its hard to justify the "laptop premium" when most customers will have an office in the area -- you need nationwide coverage. Broadband is widely available in the area currently so it will be difficult to induce people to switch. (At these prices in many rural areas, people would be falling over each other to sign up).

But they will destroy the markets of TMobile and Sprint's data cards with this better mousetrap. I'm not sure if the business model supports, but I would look upmarket at symmetric links. The cable companies are weak there due to their technology and have relatively high pricing. Symmetric DSL has distance concerns in many business locations. I think there's a market for consumer-installable T1s. Though the solution for this is really fixed wireless such as Towerstream.

So good luck to Nextel. They need it.