Sprint Nextel Corp. today announced an agreement to use QUALCOMM Inc.’s QChat platform to provide push-to-talk services. Sprint, which currently offers the Nextel Walkie-Talkie push-to-talk service, expects to use QChat technology to extend the services on the nationwide Sprint PCS Network, as well as provide interoperable push-to-talk services between users on both networks.

Sprint also announced it has selected Lucent Technologies to develop software and infrastructure necessary to enable the new services to work throughout Sprint’s CDMA2000 1xEV-DO Revision A network. In addition, Lucent Services is providing program management, multivendor network integration, testing, operational readiness and deployment services to implement QChat.

QChat is designed to deliver walkie-talkie services optimized for CDMA2000 1xEV-DO Revision A wireless networks, as well as interoperability with the Nextel National Network.

Sprint is committed to providing innovative tools that empower our customers to do what they want, when they want, said Iyad Tarazi, vice president of network development for Sprint. The work we are doing with QUALCOMM and Lucent represents a milestone in our strategy of offering all our customers a high performance push-to-talk service that they can set-up and connect in under a second no matter which of our networks they are on.

Sprint expects to begin offering QChat in early 2008. Sprint, Lucent and QUALCOMM recently completed successful trials using pre-production handsets, commercial-grade lab systems and EV-DO Revision A field sites. Commercial availability of the service will follow Sprint’s upgrade of its Power Vision Network to the EV-DO Revision A technology being rolled out later this year.

Lucent Technologies www.lucent.com

QUALCOMM Inc. www.qualcomm.com

Sprint Nextel Corp. www.sprint.com