US operator Sprint Nextel is understood to have received significant interest in its iDEN push to talk operation originally set up by Nextel.

Sprint bought up Nextel for around $36bn in 2005, giving it a solid enterprise customer base. But the flagging operator has been haemorrhaging subscribers of late and more recently shifted its evolution path from CDMA and iDEN to WiMAX.

The identity of the potential buyer for the iDEN unit remains a mystery. But it is expected that a sale will remain unlikely if the interested party has to raise capital in the midst of the ongoing financial crisis.