The acquisition of Alltel by AT&T gets FCC approval
AT&T now officially owns the Alltel assets from the patenting company Atlantic Tele-Network Inc. after the deal got approval by FCC. As the agency announced, the acquisition of Alltel by AT&T will bring benefits to the customers, because the carrier has promised to release HSPA+ service across the spectrum of Alltel in the next 15 months. The company will provide LTE services as well within the next 18 months. In addition, the mobile operator will provide CDMA voice and data roaming on the 3G network of the newly acquired company. This is expected to happen until June 2015. A great extra for the current customers of Alltel will be the free, off-contact handset that they will get, comparable to their current device. The network of the purchased company will be enriched to support the AT&T 4G. The customers of Alltel who want to use 4G will be joined to the AT&T network until June 2014.
The deal for the acquisition of Alltel by AT&T was announced back in January this year. The price of the assets of the company will cost $780 million. AT&T will get the company’s assets in 6states which includes spectrum licenses and almost 600 000 clients. AT&T is working hard to expand its spectrum nationwide and this deal is only little part of the plans of the company. It recently paid $1.9 billion for Verizon’s 700MHz airwaves. The free handset for the current Alltel customers will definitely help for the transition to the carrier.
News from AT&T is its announcement of record smartphone sales in the coming months. The sales are part of the strong marketing campaign to sell more devices and to the services of the 4G LTE network. The forecast of the company for Q4 reveal expectations for as good sells numbers as Q3 and even better. AT&T is following its 24 month upgrade cycle.
Source: FCC
