Nextel cell phones are really walkie-talkies

ON THE BUS, Yesterday- Just months after Nextel and Sprint's merge to become the New Sprint, a bumblebee colored cellular service provider, Nextel's long-kept secret was revealed: their cell phones are really walkie talkies.

"When we decided to form a union with Nextel, we had no idea the skeletons they had in their closet," said the CEO of the New Sprint at a press conference Monday. "After an investigation into said closet, we found the rumors to be true. Nextel cell phones really are walkie-talkies."

According to top secret sources who go by Fung Wah and Lucky Star, the employees at the Nextel factory in Beijing (or what they refer to as the Toy Factory) are encouraged to use their creativity when decorating children's play walkie-talkies to look like cell phones.

"We get the walkie talkies shipped in from Tawain, and then we are allowed to go to town. We can spray paint them in metallic colors, hot glue shiny things we found on the streets to use for buttons- anything to make the walkie-talkies look like cell phones is permitted, " reported Mr. Wah.

According to Ms. Star, the phones had no actual functionality as real cell phones. "Americans don't care how their phones work. They always talk about 'dropped calls' and 'no bars.' Cell phones not working is to be expected. We make that expectation a reality."

The number keys on these alleged phones worked to dial calls (or rather "change channels"), but text messaging was out. "When people complained they couldn't get the letters to spell out words, we blamed it on their lack of experience with the T9 function," said one Customer Service Representative. (To call customer service, Nextel users just had to switch their phones to the conveniant channel 9. Customer Service was available 24 hours a day, provided you were within a half mile radius.)

Once the "phones" arrive in the US, Nextel sales staff are trained in how to convince their consumers that they want the walkie-talkie service on their cell phone. "This isn't too hard," said one former Nextel sales rep who got canned after the merge, "All you have to do is remind the person about their best friend who used to live across the street and how they used tin cans tied with string to communicate. Their eyes get weepy and then they are sold on the walkie-talkie feature. Even our crappiest phone works better than a tin can."

The whole Nextel scandal was revealed one day when a Nextel customer dropped her "phone" on the bus going from Cambridge to Somerville. She had been happily beeping her way through a delightful conversation that everyone on the bus was privy to, when the vehicle hit a bump and her "phone" went flying. It landed on the foot of a cell phone connosseuir, Mr Dwight Sharp. One if its hastily stuck-on keys (the second 7) had broken off and it was the phone's shoddy craftmanship that caused Mr. Sharp to investigate further.

After pressing what he thought to be the volume on the side, the "phone" emitted a loud squeal that sounded like a cross between a goose and a baby gurgling. Then a voice came through the static. Although he couldn't decipher a word the person on the other side was saying he immediately recognized the device to be a walkie-talkie. As he handed it back to the woman who had dropped it, he suggested she "look into that."

She certainly did. As soon as she was within range of the Nextel Customer Service office, the duped women gave them an earful and threatened to sue in between blips and beeps of the phone/walkie talkie. Several other Nextel customers were rallied as well as many former Nextel employees who were disgruntled because their severence package after the merge was sub par. Shit certainly hit the fan when the suit went to Court, and even Chief Nextel officials couldn't sweet talk their way out of the walkie-talkie debacle.

The New Sprint has had minimal comments regarding the whole situation. Since they like their "new snazzy colors" they are afraid to drop the Nextel brand entirely, but selling walkie-talkies certainly isn't something they plan on continuing.

The general public, to be frank, was relieved. Most are fed up with the cell phones that acted like walkie-talkies anyway. "It was a trend that lasted far too long," comented one commuter. "I mean, why would we want our cell phones to work the way walkie-talkies do anyway? It was fun to have those as kids, but it seems silly to be saying 'Roger that' and 'Do you copy?' during my business conference calls."

Several others agreed that the walkie talkie phone was on its way out regardless of the scandal. Having to listen to other people shout into phones/walkie talkies almost caused one woman to have a conniption. In fact, a team of research scientists are currently working on a project that finds a correlation between walkie-talking bleeps on the way to work and the elusive case of the Mondays.