In a press release today, Sprint has announced the addition of more than 40 markets that are now able to take advantage of QChat push to talk services when the service makes its general consumer launch on Sunday June 15th with the LX400 by LG, Z400 by Samsung, and PRO-200 and PRO-700 by Sanyo.
Customers in the following markets will be able to order the aforementioned handsets from Telesales, online through Sprint.com, and Sprint Retail Stores:
Atlanta-Athens, Ga. Miami-West Palm Beach, Fla. Austin, Texas Milwaukee Baltimore Central New Jersey Boston Northern New Jersey Chicago Southern New Jersey Cincinnati New York City Cleveland Orange County, Calif. Colorado Oregon Columbus, Ohio Orlando Northern Connecticut Philadelphia Southern Connecticut Pittsburgh, Penn. Dallas-Fort Worth, Texas Providence, R.I. Delaware Richmond, Va. Southwest Florida Riverside-San Bernardino, Calif. Hawaii San Antonio Houston San Diego Indianapolis San Francisco Bay Area Jacksonville, Fla. South Bay, Calif. Kansas Tampa, Fla. Las Vegas Washington, D.C. Long Island, N.Y. Southwest Washington Los Angeles Western Washington North Los Angeles Winston-Salem, N.C. Memphis, Tenn.
The service will be branded Nextel Direct Connect to maintain consistency and familiarity across the new lineup with the LG LX 400 launching for $79.99, the Samsung SPH-Z400 launching at $99.99, the Sanyo PRO-200 launching at $49.99, and the Sanyo PRO-700 launching at $79.99, all after new two year agreement and $50 mail-in rebates respectively.
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The plans are disappointing… 450 min with unlimited text and DC for $49 on an individual plan. But on a shared plan, you get 700 minutes with text and DC only available as add-ons.
You wind up at $69 plus $20 (txt) plus $10 (DC) for $99, versus the $100 you’d pay on two different lines with 200 more combined minutes. What, then, is the incentive to do a shared plan?
If Qchat sales were important to Sprint, you’d think it’d be free with ANY shared plan, since you need at least one other person on DC to actually put it to use.
I don’t see a problem with the new plans, besides the fact that DC isn’t included with the fam plans
That’s my whole point… how is DC not included with a fam plan of ALL things?
[...] has announced 40 markets for its QChat service, which should hit tomorrow. I say “should” because you never know [...]
I think that these ar the ugliest phones, and being a female in a Sprint store, these are not going to appeal to my selling base. In addition, they are really stupid about their prising plans for this. The market just isn’t there (at least in my location) to launch these , especially after we switched 95% of our customers to Sprint without the Nextel 2way.
Apparently none of the featured posts have read the news about Sprint over the past 3 years. Sprint faces the real possibility of losing 3Million of their most lucrative business customers literally at the stroke of midnight on June 26th because they are using spectrum that the government demanded from Nextel years ago and have pushed the deadline back several times already. Sprint Nextel lost their latest appeal in May.
QChat is Sprint Nextel’s best hope of maintaining the level of service those 800MHz iDEN business customers were used too. The “stupid” pricing and “ugly” phones aren’t for families.
Nevertheless, still interesting.
How could Sprint make such a mistake and not include DC and M2M in all plans……oh right they are Sprint, never mind.
They really make amistake being so expensive and not standart M2M and few more. i’d like Nextel but i switch to sprint phone though, soeone said ugly phones however nextel did expensive but good quality phones comparing the cheapy feeling of cingular t mobileand more, sturdy, BIG speakers wich let you hear alot better and IDEN network is so good to transmit voice (not data uhh) seems like a landline phone to me on the i870 . i had cingular, GSM is weak, hear grabled an dthe tiny speakers. i’d wish sprint can provide good service with qchat. I want a phone that can listen the other party loud and clear !
Meanwhile, this Qchat has “launched” but you can’t buy the phones online and can’t find them in all Sprint stores. The two higher-end phones (Samung Z700 and Moto V950) are nowhere to be found. So, er, what gives?
The Sayno (sounds better than Sanyo) Pro 700 is JUNK. Both my parents got one so they could roam in Oklahoma at their lake house and actually have a signal(due to the analog builtin), but it turns out worse than the last phone they had. I tried using it for a CDMA modem so they could have internet up there as well but it wouldnt work. Called up Sprint and they told me they do not support this phone over their network nor did they know if they ever would. What a CROCK!
[...] stating that the carrier has no further plans to launch new QChat markets beyond launching the initial 54 markets in 2008, all but confirming the end of QChat [...]