Sprint completes Nextel Partners acquisition - now at 51m subscribers

wow, thats a lot,

 

Neither Verizon nor Cingular can acquire Alltel due to divestments and anti competitiveness.
DK is not going to let T-Mobile USA go to Cingular unless they start losing customers when saturation hits in wireless, and I don't see that right now either.

Sprint or T-mobile could buyout Alltel.
I think Alltel is in a position where it will be Alltel for awhile.

 

I can't imagine the feds allowing another mega merger like that. However I do think that a Sprint/Alltel deal is a little more likely to be allowed than a Verizon/Alltel deal.

Do we really want less competition and fewer carriers in the wireless market?

 

I think this would be a bad idea, I think we need to see Alltel buy more companies and become another National carrier to increase competition and hopefully lower prices.

 

My thoughts on "increased competition"

I live in an area served by all of the major carriers:
Cingular
Verizon
Sprint/Nextel (CDMA & iDEN)
T-Mobile
Alltel

and as far as I can tell having Alltel available in our market has not affected the pricing of the other carriers in the least bit. Don't get me wrong, it is nice to have another choice, I just don't think that the "national" carriers are going to get into a price war...whether there's three of them or five.

 

I think if we eliminate T-Mobile from the equation we would likely see higher prices. T-Mobile is the carrier that traditionally has the lowest prices and I think that's kept the other carriers more competitive. Sprint swallowing up Alltel probably wouldn't have much if any effect though.

 

Why would a Sprint/Altell deal be better than a Verizon/Altell deal? Either way, it would creat the largest carrier. If anything, I think that Verizon would be better as they have not had a major merger in years. All their recent growth has been organic. Obviously this is a hypothetical statement as there has been no indication that Altell will sell out. USCC on the other hand?? I would like to see them swallowed up soon. I think that in the current market with the scale of operations of the big 5, it is going to be impossible for the USCC, Suncom, etc to survive. There is plenty of competition in the U.S. market so there should be no fear of more mergers. Take a look at Europe.

 

I have to disagree, Larry. Sprint already has spectrum everwhere, an Alltel/Sprint merger would be insane due to reqired divestment (about as insane as a VZW/Alltel merger). i don't think either would be allowed to do it.

 

Sprint 30 MHz
Alltel 25 MHz
That's 55 MHz
plus customer base won't need to be divested so in ID RSA #6 would be OK.

Only place where airwave divestment is going to occur is when you get past 65~70 MHz

Most of Sprint Markets are 30 MHz a few 20MHZ like Chicago and some regions in the south 10 MHz

 

It's a long shot I know but still more likely to happen than a Verizon/Alltel merger.

 

Also there aren't any overlapping A & B side cellular licenses, as Sprint is all PCS. A Verizon/Alltel merger would have several rural areas where the combined entity would control both cellular licenses...which in most cases is not allowed by the FCC.

Who knows what will happen though...

 

I forgot Nextel airwaves (SMR) and that will make it probably make Sprint have 75~80 MHz

What could happen is that Sprint would have to divest 10-20 MHz in most markets in just airwaves.

FCC does not care if you have both A and B Cellular Blocks these days. Market controll is what the FCC looks at. So if most of the customers are with the 2 cellular providers and the merge then they have to divest.

 

In Catskills, NY here, we have
Cingular
Sprint/Nextel
T-Mobile
Cellular One/DCS
Verizon
US Cellular

I think the only one that has made a difference is Cell1/DCS - they have definantly made the market very competitve (Unicel does the same in the northern part of the state).

Back in Virginia we had
Alltel
Cingular
Sprint/Nextel
US Cellular
T-Mobile
Verizon
NTelos

The competition there was NTelos - which was pretty good

 

US Cellular has ownership in the VZW networks in New York, but they don't have a network in the state.

 

Right, that's why I said that it would be a problem in rural areas...meaning the rural areas that do not have significant 1900MHz competitors. I should have been more specific.

 

I agree T-Mobile does help keep prices down and more competetive with the other carriers, and if we lost them I could see prices going higher.

 

i agree, also. tmo drives the lower prices, and they are not that bad, my opinion.

 

I think there are a lot of us who root for these mergers to happen simply to see their carrier get bigger than another without even taking into consideration whether or not it will benefit us customers.

 

So Sprint now has 51 millions subscribers, Verizon 53 Million. The difference is just two million. If the FCC wouldn't allow VZW to buy ALLTEL, then I would sure hope they wouldn't allow Sprint to take over ALLTEL either, because they are just two million customers short. Either of those companies taking over ALLTEL would create the same mega-merger company and would lower competition.

 

Please elaborate a little on that. Why would Verizon buying ALLTEL have such a huge mega-merger, anti competiton effect whereas Sprint buying Alltel wouldn't??? They are just now 2 million customers apart.

 

If that wouldn't be allowed with a Verizon/ALLTEl merger then I don't see why this was allowed in more than one market when Cingular took over AT&T.

 

Actually I think Sprint's number is 50 million (not 51) once the affiliates and partners are all counted. So that's a difference of 3 million. But I agree that even a Sprint/Alltel merger would have tough time passing fed scrutiny.

 

This is a very good point, we root for the merger to happen then later on complain that they are getting too expensive & restrictive as they become bigger & more powerful.

 

I think Alltel has the money to stand by itself. But that is just me.

 

The difference is in divestment. Sprint would have to only divest a few markets and probably 10 MHz airwaves in most markets. Verizon would have to divest a bunch of markets like 1/2 of Alltel's markets and that would include customers and network. Same with Cingular. So I go agree it would not be cake walk for Sprint, but it could be done. It would be fairly easy for T-Mobile to buy Alltel, but I don't see that happening.