Remember 2004-2005? Let’s go back there now… Remember… back when people still thought Revenge of the Sith was going to redeem the prequels… Ok, let’s not remember, it’s too painful. Anyway, in late 2004, Sprint and Nextel announced a “merger of equals.” And now, after billions of dollars in mistakes, they’ve finally announced that Nextel will officially die on June 30, 2013. What does this mean for Nextel customers? Yes, apparently they still exist!

CNNMoney says that 5.4 million customers remained on Nextel’s network as of the end of March.

Sprint has been successful at transitioning them off the network, but unfortunately, they’re really good at transitioning them to other companies.

Last quarter, Nextel lost 455,000 contracted customers, and only 228,000 rejoined the Sprint-branded service, says CNNMoney.

Sprint wrote down $543 million of Nextel’s value last quarter. That’s just another drop in the bucket compared to the $29.7 billion writedown it took on the Nextel brand in 2008. Virtually all of the the merger’s value has now been written off.

Ouch.

Sprint’s Nextel network gets its death date: June 30, 2013 [CNN Money]

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