Nextel customer education specialist Nelson Pham demonstrates his company's new Creditel credit-card reader Friday at the Nextel Central customer center by the Las Vegas Convention Center. Photo by Gary Thompson.

Do you know where your children are?

If they are carrying combination cell phones and walkie-talkies from Nextel Communications, you do.

The global positioning system incorporated into Nextel phones is just one of the 21st century technologies that salesmen in Nextel's new 15,000-square-foot Las Vegas customer center are touting.

Nextel Central, which occupies space above a monorail system platform and adjacent to the Las Vegas Convention Center, has been operating since September. However, the company has invited 250 Las Vegas leaders and clients to attend a grand opening today .

They will see one of only two such Nextel centers. The other, called the Center of Excellence, is at company headquarters in Reston, Va.

"There are 40 million people that come (to Las Vegas) every year, and there are 6 million business visitors," Vice President and General Manger Bob Halcrow said.

Many are convention attendees, such as the construction executives who will visiting Las Vegas next week at the Conexpo/Conagg trade show for the construction industry, Halcrow said.

Others are key business customers, who make a special trip to Las Vegas. The Las Vegas location provides a convenient place for West Coast executives to meet with Nextel representatives, including headquarters officials who can join by video conference.

During conventions, customers may use videoconferencing at the center to speak to Nextel officials or conduct meetings for people in their industry or within their client's company, Halcrow said.

They can relax in a private lounge, use a concierge service or mingle with the public in the wireless tech lounge. The lounge has Wi-Fi service, personal computers and a wide-screen television.

It's a handy place for convention attendees to stop after riding the monorail from a Strip hotel or before returning on the monorail to their hotel that night.

While Nextel sells its services to consumers, about 80 percent of its sales are to business customers.

Nextel representatives are happy to show potential customers how to use the global-positioning system to track the movement, speed and location of trucks and vehicles inside a metropolitan area or along the Interstate highways that connect cities.

"They can see their entire fleet," customer education specialist Nelson Pham said.

Nextel customers typically use the walkie-talkie function for short messages and rely on cell phones for longer conversations, company officials say. Nextel has been providing the cell phone-walkie talkies for 10 years, but some competitors are also starting to offer the combination products.

Traveling sales people may find another product handy. It's called Creditel, and it's a mobile phone that can read credit cards for on-the-spot purchases.

Nextel also offers WAIS, a wide-area interoperability system made by a Raytheon Co., that enables police, fire and other emergency services to communicate with one another even if they use different mobile-phone technologies and spectra.

"Every product we sell we demonstrate here," Halcrow said.