Free Newsletter
Rumor Mill: AT&T looking at Leap?
Free newsletter via e-mail
Tools
AT&T Mobility may be considering a purchase of Leap Wireless, according to the Wall Street Journal's Heard on the Street column.
The rumor gained legs after AT&T and Leap both decided to cancel visits to the J.P. Morgan Telecom, Media and Technology conference in Boston this week. AT&T also canceled its planned appearance at a Barclays Capital conference next week. Speculation is that Leap might be an attractive and relatively inexpensive purchase for AT&T. With Leap's stock at around $40 per share, the carrier's market cap stands at around $2.8 billion.
However, Matthew Wurtzel at TheDeal.com wrote that the WSJ may be,well, leaping to conclusions, since Leap runs a CDMA network while AT&T favors GSM. Nonetheless, AT&T recently agreed to purchase some of Verizon Wireless' divested Alltel assets, which is CDMA territory.
Both AT&T and Leap declined to comment on the speculation. A Leap spokesman said that company could not attend the J.P. Morgan conference because of an unspecified "scheduling issue." AT&T begged off its appearances due to its ongoing labor troubles, according to the WSJ.
For more:
- see this WSJ item
- see this TheDeal.com post
Related Articles:
Leap posts $47.4 net loss, adds nearly 493K subs
Leap introduces a new USB modem
Leap sees wider loss, but adds 385K subscribers in Q4
Comments
Posted by TLeap | May 20, 2009 - 3:45pm
The more imminent rumor is AT&T exclusive agents and Leap overtures. If AT&T agent stores cannot sell either iPhones or subsidized netbooks, then they want a non-contract unlimited plan from AT&T or the right to sell another prepaid carrier. Leap is courting AT&T agents. AT&T could not digest being at the J.P.Morgan with Leap engaging disgruntled AT&T channels. The CWA pending strike is enough indigestion.
Posted by Rion Partners | May 21, 2009 - 9:16am
Network costs tend to plague all the service providers. AT&T has managed to cut costs by migrating legacy customers (Mobitext, Analog, 2G, etc) to newer technologies. With the addition of a CDMA network and the long term deployment plus session limited deployment plans for LTE, AT&T would have to place a high valuation on the subscriber base. Per an AT&T insider: the most time is currently spent with the handset providers and even their suppliers (chip set amnufacturers, etc) as service providers today believe that the HS market is the largest determining factor to subscriber churn.
Comments (2) | Post a comment