The Wall Street Journal reports that the Nextel spectrum swap is a done deal: This will give Nextel a contiguous chunk of spectrum that makes their system easier to operate while improving the public-safety bands near which Nextel equipment interoperates. It should make operations much simpler for everyone involved.
Nextel gets $2.06 billion in credit for the spectrum they give up and will pay at least $2.8 billion in migrating public-safety users' equipment to newer spectrum and systems.
Who gets the public-safety contracts? Those will be interesting companies to follow with an infusion that large flooding the market over a short time period.