AT&T confirmed that it has completed the sale of Centennial Wireless assets to Verizon Wireless. Under the terms of this agreement, Verizon will cough up $235 million to acquire approximately 117,000 subscribers within Louisiana and Mississippi. The divested assets purchased by Big Red encompass six service areas including Lafayette, La., LA-5 (Beauregard), LA-6 (Iberville), LA-7 (West Feliciana), MS-8 (Claiborne) and MS-9 (Copiah). Two other service areas in Alexandra, La. and LA-3 (DeSoto) were sold to Metro PCS.
Announced back in November 2008, the sale of these assets was required as part of AT&T’s acquisition of Centennial Wireless. In an asset swap, AT&T agreed to buy a portion of Alltel-divested assets from Verizon and concomitantly Verizon stepped in with a $235 million dollar offer for AT&T’s Centennial assets. While AT&T received approval for its acquisition of Centennial Wireless back in October 2009, this Verizon deal was met with opposition by Cellular South and stalled in the midst of the regulatory process until now.
With regulatory approval out of the way, Big Red can finally begin to bring these new customers into the fold; renewing their contracts, transferring their billing to Verizon’s system, and presumably converting the towers to 3G EV-DO service. Anyone former Centennial Customers happy that the acquisition has been approved and excited to be able to snag a DROID?