How does No. 2 wireless carrier Verizon increase its user base – buy them from Rural Cellular’s Unicel
By Will Park on Monday, July 30th, 2007 at 1:04 PM PST In Financial/Corporate News, Partnerships, Verizon
If you’re the second-largest wireless carrier in the US, locked in a heated battle with top-dog AT&T (NYSE: T) for subscribers, what can you do to increase your customer-base? Well, one way would be to buy them, literally. Verizon (NYSE: VZ) Wireless has announced their plans to buy the Unicel brand from Rural Cellular, netting the CDMA carrier about 716,000 users – with Verizon Wireless’s 62.1 million customers trailing AT&T’s 63.7 million, the addition of three-quarters of a million subscribers will be a healthy boost indeed.
Rural Cellular uses GSM and CDMA standards in their mixed-network, and Verizon Wireless plans to convert GSM users to CDMA service while holding onto the GSM network for roaming purposes (for subscribers on other GSM networks). Verizon Wireless will be paying $757 million, or $45 per share, for Rural Cellular.
Watch out AT&T, it looks like Verizon is planning on making a run at the top-dog title in the US. You aren’t planning on taking that iPhone exclusivity contract all the way to the bank are you?
[Via: Yahoo News]
While this will increase rural coverage for Verizon Wireless much like AT&T’s purchase of Dobson (i.e. Cellular One), this will have some major implications in Vermont: the only two real players are Verizon Wireless and Unicel. So all those Unicel customers that just got switched from CDMA to GSM a couple years ago will have to switch back over to CDMA. Those who want GSM-only phones like iPhones or Treo 680s will be SOL within a couple years because they won’t be able to get SIMs for Vermont.
See:
http://discussion.treocentral.com/showthread.php?t=148926
http://makkintosshu.dyndns.org/journal/say-goodbye-to-the-iphone-in-vermont
And you know that AT&T’s not going to let residents of Vermont keep using their purchased-out-of-state contracts much longer as they’re already always roaming.
I pesonally think this is lame.. i was gonna get a new phone for my birthday and now im so mixed up ive gotta wait 3 months for them to change coverage so i dont end up paying 300 dollars for a chunk of plastic that doesn’t do anything usefull in vermont…