AT&T Eyes Verizon Wireless Assets
By Ed Oswald | Wednesday, February 4, 2009 at 10:30 am
On one hand, AT&T is fighting paying its employees more. On the other, its hoping to snag up assets that Verizon Wireless must divest as part of its merger agreement with Alltel Wireless.
The Wall Street Journal is reporting that AT&T is likely to be able to snag a majority of those assets as it appears to be the bidder in the strongest position. A cable provider is also apparently in the running, although the paper does not specify which one.
Among these assets are 2.1 million subscribers including spectrum and infrastructure to support those customers across 22 states. Transferring those customers to AT&T would likely push the carrier above 80 million once this quarter’s subscriber additions are figured in.
Interest groups are none to happy about it, arguing that it essentially is transferring customers from one mega-carrier to another. Public Knowledge has argued that the Obama Administration should pressure Verizon to sell these assets to smaller carriers.
No sale would be final upon winning of the bids–the DOJ would still have to sign off on the sales.
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CWA: No Strike at AT&T, Yet | Technologizer Says:
February 7th, 2009 at 10:41 pm[…] any case, the WSJ story from Wednesday certainly doesn’t help their cause. If you can spend millions or even billions […]
February 4th, 2009 at 10:55 am
I hope California isn’t one of those 22 states. Otherwise I’m changing carriers asap.
February 4th, 2009 at 1:21 pm
Why would you change carriers? I don’t understand your logic. If you are a Verizon customer you wouldn’t be moving to the company that bought the Verizon assets.
February 4th, 2009 at 3:35 pm
If you acquire the assets, you will also inherit the debt.
February 8th, 2009 at 9:46 am
On one hand AT&T is going to spend more money on acquiring assets but then on the other hand they are refusing to give the CWA and it’s workers a fair contract.
February 9th, 2009 at 12:56 am
Depends on your definition of fair. I think the CWA should take the offer (guaranteed 9+% raise over 4 years?! WTF, why can’t it be performance-based?) because the offer is *way* more than fair–it borders on philanthropy.
February 9th, 2009 at 9:18 am
WTF is “FAIR” when many much more qualified non-bargained personnel are being individually surplulsed? The receive no recourse or arbitration. Pink slip and see ya… “thank you for your 30 years of service, good bye”. What ninny would even “suggest” force Verizon to sell to a smaller company? OMG stupidity, in this very day of mass insolvency, what, create another bunch of companies that “deserve” a bailout because they could not handle the added assets and debt. ie: Citibank / BofA / etal.
February 10th, 2009 at 1:15 am
It doesn’t matter if you are with AT&T or Verizon you are still getting cheated. They are monopoly’s and they don’t care about their clients best interests. I have a contract that’s got to go! According to consumer action 2009 cell phone contracts with company’s such as Verizon, AT&T, Sprint and T-Mobile are becoming more and more expensive and there is nothing we can do about it. If you don’t have an expensive unlimited cell phone plan you may end up paying overage fees of up to 45 cents per minute. All the contract company’s just decided to up there text messages to more than 20 cents per message, we paid 10 cents in 2005 and this rise is unjustified in relation to inflation or their costs of delivering the message. So if you don’t like the new charges you can terminate the contract early but only if you are prepared to pay between $150-$200 in termination fees and that is only available for some contracts in their second year. The other very scary thing about contract phones is that after your contract time is up they just renew the contract without notifying you so if you don’t pay attention and cancel the contract in writing and with a notice period you’ll find yourself roped into another two years of exorbitant bills. I also discovered that these contract companies have been cheating immigrants with international calling cards. I suggest that if you have a cell phone contract, you should find out when it expires and wright a letter within the 30 day notice period terminating the contract. Then go out and get a prepaid wireless contract that will cost you a fraction of the price. I’ve bought a Tracfone and I’m now saving money every month, so good buy and good riddance to AT&T.
July 23rd, 2009 at 4:04 am
I don’t think this will affect customers all that much. All the providers share each other’s network anyway. All this means is which provider get the wholesale license fees.