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AT&T-Alltel rumors gathering steam
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
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Comments
Posted by Bitster | April 25, 2007 - 3:04pm
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 - 3:43pm
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 - 2:03pm
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.
