AT&T reportedly eyeing post-merger Verizon Wireless assets
By Donald Melanson 
posted Feb 4th 2009 1:32PM
posted Feb 4th 2009 1:32PM
As you may recall, one of the requirements that Verizon had to agree with in order to complete its little acquisition of Alltel was that it must offload some $3 billion in wireless assets to avoid becoming too monolithic, and it looks like there's already a number of bidders angling for a piece of the action. The biggest of those, by far, is AT&T, which is apparently looking to pick up as big a chunk of the assets as it is able to and, according to The Wall Street Journal, it's in a good position to do just that. Other interested parties reportedly include a joint bid from the Carlyle Group and Kohlberg Kravis & Roberts & Co, a separate bid from Providence Equity Partners LLC, and at least one unnamed cable provider. Any of those bids, however, would still be subject to approval by the Department of Justice, with AT&T sure to draw the most scrutiny of the lot.[Via The Wall Street Journal]
What does this mean? What kind of "assets" are we talking about here?
See here: http://news.vzw.com/news/2009/01/pr2009-01-09.html
/side note - hows come Engadget.com and Engadgetmobile.com have a different set of comments on the exact same news story?
Very small donkeys.
Sorry, couldn't resist.
Why would the justice department force Verizon to divest these markets in the name of "competition" if they are going to *possibly* be allowed to sell these markets to AT&T? How would that preserve competition? These markets need to be divested to a company that doesn't already have a footprint in these areas. US Cellular comes to mind in many of these markets. Metro PCS and Cricket are others that don't have a footprint in many of these areas. If competition isn't preserved, why even go through the motions of forcing Verizon to divest?
They didn't force them -- they "volunteered" to sell those markets to help make sure the deal went through....
For the most part it's silly because, as you point out, the company with the most cash is probably going to buy them - which is usually the biggest competitor.
On the other hand I know that one of these markets has never had the choice of AT&T because there is no coverage. They have been stuck with Verizon (barely), Sprint (barely), and Alltel. If AT&T buys that market, it would give some good competition to not only Verizon, but also the local landline and ISP's in the area.
The only reason Verizon "volunteered" some of those markets was because they knew they would be told to divest those markets anyway and they were trying to act in good faith. The DOJ came back and told them they would need to divest even more markets. Even so, in most markets, allowing AT&T to buy the assets would not preserve competition because they are already a competitor...
The markets that Verizon has up for grabs are pretty much 100% areas that AT&T currently has limited or no service at all. For the most part these areas will be "adding" AT&T. The number of carriers will not increase or lower because of that. For a good reference go to coverageviewer.info and go to the beta page and load up the "Cellular" and "Divested" layer. There is literally 2-3 places where the Divested properties overlay existing AT&T areas. There is the PCS spectrum is in some of the places, but it gives you a good idea, more in the northern part of the country.
US Cellular is going to end up with Wyoming, the Dakotas, Montana, and possibly Idaho and/or Colorado. At least that's what I have heard, time will tell.
Haha, are you serious? US Cellular is in no position to outbid AT&T up there. AT&T has showed interest and they reallly want them, I can 99.9% bet you that AT&T will end up with them. From what I have read as of today, US Cellular isn't even showing interest.
More and more native AT&T coverage for us. I'm loving it. NO other service provider has a chance to outbid AT&T.
I predicted this would happen RIGHT when news came out that Verizon had to get rid of some spectrum to clear the Feds. So that should put the subscriber base at neck and neck between the two. Worry not. Plenty of competition just with Red vs. Blue. There's a political joke there somewhere. lol...
And with only two real "competitors" sometimes price hikes follow. For instance- if I roam into AT&T with my current SIM card (China Mobile) I get free incoming texts and outgoing texts cost me about US$.20 whereas apparently it costs more than that both ways with a GoPhone SIM. Nice.
Isn't the divesture deadline fast approaching if not already passed?