If Verizon buys Alltel...

[dorunrun]

What would that mean for Authorized Dealers?

I've been looking into opening an Alltel in South Mississippi where we have a nice size market, but only 1 Alltel dealer that's on the other side of town. Verizon isn't offered here, but Alltel works great and is one of the best options available for our mostly rural population.

If Verizon buys Alltel, could I still open an Alltel store? Would it be converted to Verizon? Should i open a store before they buy Alltel?

I've managed a 2 T-mobile stores and a Nextel store for a dealer in the past and recently decided to strike out on my own.

Thanks for your help.

[Blue4Life]

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (SymbianOS/9.1; U; en-us) AppleWebKit/413 (KHTML, like Gecko) Safari/413 es70)

Until the merger is approved by the regulators, Alltel still exists. Once the merger is approved (possibly by the end of this year if not early next year), I imagine that you wouldn't be able to sell Alltel plans. If it's anything like other wireless mergers, customers with Alltel plans would be able to keep their existing calling plans intact after the merger.

[dorunrun]

Thanks for the reply.

How would it work in my case where Verizon doesn't exist, but Alltel does. Wouldn't you suppose that Verizon will be using Alltel's existing towers in this area, convert Alltel stores to Verizon, and begin offering Verizon service?

I remember when Sprint took over Nextel they eventually converted all the stores over to Sprint. I'm wondering if I should find an Alltel Master Dealer and open a store or not.

Thanks again.

[spleck]

I would think you could be an Alltel store until the point in the merger when VZW decides to rebrand the area. Then you'd probably be the first VZW store in the area.