BlackBerryForums.com member Q14  is a college basketball recruiter who communicates with many of his prospects via SMS.

Yet, as a Nextel BlackBerry 7520 user, he's put up a post expressing frustration with his device's lack of integrated SMS. He wonders why he cannot send his prospect an SMS message from his BlackBerry to, say a Cingular or Verizon handheld. Instead, he has to email the recruit- tricky considering that most often, he does not know the mobile email address of the player.

Q14 contacted Nextel about the issue. Apparently, they told him that Nextel's Mobile Originated SMS two-way messaging uses a technology called net-alert, but that Nextel handhelds currently do not support Net Alerts.

What's more, Q14 quoted Nextel as saying, if the SMS is sent to the Nextel BlackBerry 7520 from a CDMA/GPRS handheld such as the types used by Verizon Wireless or Cingular Wireless,the sender's number is not passed on to the 7520. That's because the 7520 uses a technology called Integrated Digital Enhanced Network, (iDEN), an 11-year old Motorola-developed platform with, as I add here, a good bit of proprietary technology behind it.

The solution for now, Q14 says that Nextel told him, is to use the Nextel Web site to send SMS messages to non-Nextel handsets.