Sprint remains on schedule to decommission the iDEN Nextel National Network beginning at 12:01 am Eastern time on June 30.
Sprint said it plans to recycle nearly all of the iDEN network equipment that it can’t reuse – including cables, batteries, even the concrete shelters that many iDEN cell sites occupy. The projected result of the effort is a staggering amount of recycled network gear and other materials weighing more than 100 million pounds.
Sprint will gut hundreds of cell sites of obsolete iDEN equipment — from radios to server racks, antennas to air conditioners — and will stage it all for recycling vendors. Most concrete shelters that house iDEN cell sites will be crushed and turned into composite for roads and bridges. Sites where CDMA and LTE equipment is co-located will be left intact, minus the iDEN gear.
When decommissioning of the iDEN network is complete, nearly 30,000 iDEN installations will be taken off air. The iDEN recycling project is expected to continue into early 2014.
