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AT&T-Alltel rumors gathering steam
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The Wall Street Journal builds the case for the already rumored acquisition of Alltel by AT&T. Since AT&T Q1 net income nearly doubled thanks to a "breakneck acquisition binge" and the carrier just pulled out of talks for a stake in Telecom Italia, the WSJ thinks CEO Ed Whitacre has turned his full attention to Alltel. Whitacre hinted at future wireless acquisitions on the AT&T earnings call yesterday: "To the extent there are opportunities to strengthen our wireless business, which is a major source of growth, we will continue to look at opportunities there as well." Vague to be sure, but a previous WSJ article claimed the two were already in talks, and the newspaper pegs the potential deal's pricetag at less than $30 billion. And we all know Whitacre has swallowed bigger fish than that. An AT&T spokesman told FierceWireless that it does not comment on speculation.
For more on the rumor:
- see this article from WSJ
Comments
Posted by Bitster | April 25, 2007 - 2:04pm
It should not be underestimated how much it will cost to convert the existing Alltel CDMA network and customers to the new Cingular/AT&T wireless GSM network technology/ handsets.
Posted by Anonymous | April 25, 2007 - 2:43pm
Whitacre was not on the AT&T earnings call. The quote should be attributed to Rick Lindner, AT&T's CFO.
Posted by Anonymous | April 27, 2007 - 1:03pm
actually if you check out http://www.gsmworld.com/cgi-bin/ni_map.pl?cc=us&net=wh
you will see that alltel has plenty of GSM coverage - some where AT&T isn't. so it would help them if a couple different ways.
Posted by Anonymous | May 9, 2009 - 6:09pm
The main concern is for the employees of Alltel's Trust portion. The employee concern is if they will be part of the ATT acquisition, if they will be retained by Verizon wireless, or if they will be dismissed alltogether requiring them to search for new jobs.
Posted by Anonymous | May 14, 2009 - 11:53pm
There is no GSM coverage by alltel...only cdma. No alltel phone carries a sim card.
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