Even the Mayor thinks Nextel Sucks

Apparently Mumbles the Mayor (AKA Tomas M. Menino) here in Boston is sick of crappy cell phone reception from Nextel and wants something done about it. Well, what the Mayor wants, the mayor gets and he went on a tour of the city and documented areas that he drove through and his cell phone lost signal (see graphic.) Shockingly (and yes this is intended to be sarcastic) the mayor found that low income areas (the self titled "ghettos") of Boston tended to lose service the most. I wonder if the Mayor realizes that the reason this occurs is the result of fairly sound business practice: If people don't have money to pay for a product they don't generally buy said product. If there is no customer base, there is no motivation for the provider of the aformentioned product to provide a quality service to that area...Anyway, check out the full article at Boston.com
I guess the real question that arises from all of this is how the city chose Nextel over a real carrier like Verizon Wireless or Sprint? The only reason would be the walkie talkie function on Nextel, but if you get no signal...