http://www.pcworld.com/businesscenter/article/146749/verizon_wireless_to_acquire_alltel.html Verizon Wireless announced Thursday that it has entered into an agreement to acquire Alltel for US$5.9 billion, plus the assumption of debt, in a deal that will create the biggest mobile phone company in the U.S. Based on Alltel's projected net debt at closing of $22.2 billion, the aggregate value of the deal is $28.1 billion, Verizon said. The merger should be complete by the end of the year, pending regulatory approvals, Verizon said
This has been all over the news up here in Arkansas being that Alltel is based in Little Rock. Maybe we'll get some Verizon service up here where I am at now.
i hate it. I have MyCircle with 1000 day mins and pay 65.00 a month. I easily burn 4000 mins on mycircle. Guess I'll have to switch to an unlimited plan and double my bill
This deal makes sense, especially since both carriers are CDMA. My concern is whether T-Mobile responds to this by buying Sprint/Nextel. That would be a disaster and would create one company with 3 different mobile systems to integrate: GSM, CDMA & iDEN. Looking at how Sprint is messing up Nextel, uh oh. If they do it, I'll dump T-Mobile for AT&T.
that would be crazy, Sprint is already messed up with Nextel, dunno why Sprint even did that in the first place. I wish Verizon put Sprint out of its misery and bought them before the Nextel merger. I remember when Sprint was on the top of the world of the wireless dept during the cell market boom during the late 90's early 00's, now they're just utter crap....
They did it for scale, which is why T-Mobile might buy Sprint. The idea of having a 3rd big competitor to Verizon and AT&T is a good one, but these leftover pieces (Sprint, Nextel & T-Mobile) are so disparate from each other it's like taking body parts from different people and creating Frankenstein's monster. Without a 3rd competitors, clearly prices for mobile service would be higher than they are. Sprint's the one who came up with the idea of unlimited service for $99/month, even though it was Verizon who first introduced it (to steal Sprint's thunder). It was T-Mobile who decided to include text messaging in the price. It was T-Mobile who just yesterday said you could add additional lines to an unlimited plan for $50/month. You better believe none of this would have happened if Verizon and AT&T were the only national wireless companies. If this national wi-max thing works out, cable companies will eventually join the fray to keep the big two honest.
Alltel sold off a county in Litchfield, CT (Alltel didn't service the area except that one county) and they did away with MyCircle. MyCircle is a pretty complex plan to only maintain it for 5-10% of customers. I wouldn't be surprised is VZW creates a program similiar to it. Im a DTV installer. 1/4 of those minutes are sitting on hold all friggen day. A fair chunk belong to the g/f. It won't happen. At this point, they are two completely different animals. Tmobile is struggling to even get in the data market. Sprint still doesn't know what to do about Nextel, much less keep their current customers. Back in the CDMA/GSM quality debate days, I predicted they all would eventually merge into one technology. All the carriers, even the whole world, (except sprint) is going LTE. Wi-Max will NOT survive. Sprint is well aware of their trouble but they keep going against the flow of the industry. Sprint is always trying to be a leader by going a different path. Hell, they sold off their entire cellular division to come up with the "PCS". They tried to convince everyone PCS was the wave of the future. Here we are, 15 years later, and the old 850 MHZ band is still king. I suspect eventually VZW will be broken up like MA Bell. With their recent winning of the 700 MHZ auction and now Alltel buyout, they will rule the wireless world. Once LTE is fully integrated, then GSM's only advantage (which is their phone selection) will be gone. It won't even be about coverage anymore, it will be all about bandwidth capacity.
btw, Sprint was the first to do the unlimited plan, BUT in limited markets to test the waters first, Verizon was the first to offer it nationwide with the competitors followed within hours.
I love my Verizon coverage. I just hate how they impose their own interface on all the phones. It's complete garbage. It's the worst phone crippling, unfortunately I'm willing to put up w/ the trade off for the best service.
Come and get your love is still the absolute stupidest advertising slogan I've heard in a long time for a cell phone company.
With the acquisition a done deal, Verizon is now make strides to remain the top carrier. Being an alltel customer, I was afraid of what they were going to do with the existing plans. With the rollout of LTE (the next generation for both CDMA and GSM that combines voice and data on the same channel and superior speeds) we should see better phones across the board and sim chips inside VZW phones.
