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AT&T wins approval to purchase Alltel

Written by Andre Yoskowitz @ 20 Sep 2013 10:36 User comments (2)

AT&T wins approval to purchase Alltel

The FCC has approved AT&T's proposed acquisition of Atlantic Tele-Network's (Alltel) retail wireless business.
Although the agency says the transaction "will likely cause some competitive and other public interest harms in several local markets" it is approving the deal since AT&T has accepted a number of conditions.

One such condition is that AT&T must maintain Alltel's CDMA network through June 2015.

The approval was not a guarantee. In August, FCC stopped reviewing the transaction because they said AT&T did not provide enough information on how the carrier would integrate Alltel's prepaid customers to its network.

Besides the agreement to keep the CDMA network running, AT&T also agreed to ensure that all of Alltel's CDMA network footprint would be covered by the company's own HSPA+ faux-4G service within 15 months of the transaction closing. Additionally, 75 percent of the footprint must have access to LTE within 18 months.



Finally, and perhaps most importantly, all Alltel customers will be provided "a handset comparable to his or her existing handset, at no cost to the customer and without requiring a contract extension."

AT&T acquired 600,000 customers and all of Alltel's remaining spectrum for $780 million.

Tags: AT&T alltel
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2 user comments

121.9.2013 01:31

I thought Alltel was already bought out by Verizon years ago? I was with Alltel living in Nebraska at the time when that area switched.

221.9.2013 16:12

Originally posted by CNDLG:
I thought Alltel was already bought out by Verizon years ago? I was with Alltel living in Nebraska at the time when that area switched.
It is what is left of Alltel after the Verizon purchase. Verizon had to agree to let some areas "go" because of overlap in a few areas.

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