Before Getting Bought By Verizon Wireless, Alltel Tried To Buy Sprint, T-Mobile And AT&T Wireless

from the merger-mania dept

Tue, Jun 24th 2008 12:52am — Mike Masnick

After being rumored for years, Verizon Wireless finally bought Alltel earlier this month. However, Alltel's CEO has now admitted that the company wasn't just looking to be acquired these past few years. It had, itself, aggressively looked into buying Sprint, T-Mobile or even AT&T Wireless at times. In fact, it tried to buy Sprint three separate times. The other two certainly seem like longshots. Deutsche Telekom appears to have no real interest in getting rid of T-Mobile, and depending on which version of AT&T Wireless you're talking about, it would have been difficult to convince the various parent companies involved that a sale to Alltel made sense. And that, of course, ignores the fact that T-Mobile and AT&T Wireless were from the GSM camp, rather than the CDMA camp. Still, it is interesting to see that the smaller Alltel was looking at buying its way up the food chain.

Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.

Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.

While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.

–The Techdirt Team

Filed Under: mergers, mobile phones
Companies: alltel, at&t, sprint, t-mobile, verizon wireless

19 Comments

If you liked this post, you may also be interested in...

Reader Comments

Subscribe: RSS

View by: Time | Thread

XCetron, 24 Jun 2008 @ 2:28am

ah, one step closer to monopolization
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
- Anonymous Coward, 1 Jul 2008 @ 8:15pm
  
  Re:
  idiot
  [ link to this | view in chronology ]
Austin, 24 Jun 2008 @ 7:20am

Alltel
I sure hope this deal goes through well and verizon does not get ride of the Favorite 10 numbers or alltels great prepaid plan. When they join networks cell phone reception will be great.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Thomas, 24 Jun 2008 @ 7:34am

So Verizon now owns Alltel, huh? Will the service be any better?????
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Sumbuddy Stoopid, 24 Jun 2008 @ 7:44am

Hey Now
I like Verizon had them for years... One day a long time ago I walked in to the At&t store I bought my phone at, and was a brand new Cingular store. My service had dropped out, I was getting other users voicemails, and my calls would not go through, A LOT!!! So I threw my phone down on the desk and said "fix it, or I'm leaving!" Ended up with me leaving. Walked right accross the parking lot to a Verizon store and have had them ever since with out a hitch. Cingusucks (now At&t -Ironic) never sent me my cancelation bill. I hope something like this doesn't happen to my service again, at least this time I'm not with the company being bought...
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Arkwin, 24 Jun 2008 @ 8:07am

Verizon OS
Verizon is good, in fact it might even have better call quality, but there phone OS looks like a kid made it. Not to mention that everything is pretty much locked down on them too. Examples, on my friends pretty expensive Verizon phone, only a blue tooth headset, MY PIX, MY FLIXS or something, I'm sorry I want my phone to look professional.

This is the reason i went with Cingular, I've gotten dropped calls a couple of times, but that's been about it. Another point is that Cingular has, in my opinion, the widest selection of phones.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Verizomboodle, 24 Jun 2008 @ 8:17am

Verizon is horrible in my area.
We have terrible coverage from Verizon in my area. Where as, AT&T(Cingular) has been great. Their customer service has been responsive, their family talk plan with national coverage is a much cheaper option for me than Verizon's plans were/are.

Better phones and accessories and with my roll over minutes, I have more minutes than I can possible use up in a month.

Nope, not going to Verizon any time soon.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
jbk, 24 Jun 2008 @ 5:31pm

if you are constantly rolling over minutes every month..do you think you might be paying too much for your service...the minutes do actually expire after a while. I liked Cingular...but AT&T customer service leaves something to be desired...plus the service isnt as good as before.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
mebbers, 1 Jul 2008 @ 3:44pm

Verizon
hmmm well i love verizon, they have great service &theyre phones are cute. i wonder when alltel will start getting verizons phones...
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Joe, 3 Jul 2008 @ 11:53am

Verizon... Your world, Crippled.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
kylie, 14 Jul 2008 @ 3:31pm

??
can i swich to verizon wireless b4 my two year plan for alltel is up i hope so b/c i hate alltel
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
- victoriak68 (profile), 21 Oct 2009 @ 3:31pm
  
  Re: ??
  Stupid people...
  [ link to this | view in chronology ]
sam stutzman, 23 Jul 2008 @ 2:22pm

So.
are all the alltels now going to turn into verizon wireless? because i have a blackberry that could be used only with verizon, and if the altell in my town turns into verizon i could activiate it.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
dfgdfg, 15 Aug 2008 @ 11:24pm

verizon
alltel rocks i think verizon is terrible
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
- Anonymous Coward, 20 Jan 2009 @ 12:27pm
  
  Re: verizon
  me too
  [ link to this | view in chronology ]
Anonymous Coward, 30 Jan 2009 @ 7:12pm

Wait what happens to the chad commercials now? Does the verison guy and chad make friends? Or does the verison guy just disappear?
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Justin, 7 Jun 2009 @ 9:40pm

Data Plans
I have an alltel unlimited data plan. VZW charges an extra sixty F**&^&*g bucks a month to have unlimited tethered internet, which is the whole reason I went alltel. Plus my service, cell and customer, is much better with alltel. I've had verizon before and it sucked balls. I hate monopolization, it pisses me off! Anybody know if we're gonna start getting charged by VZW's rates or what?
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Cody, 8 Sep 2009 @ 8:17pm

i used to have alltel before they merdged with verizon and i loved it! now that its verizon i HATE it.my service actually got worse everywhere i went and customer service is a nightmare now! ugh! i sure do hope that someday they will split back up and alltel merges with t-mobile! *i love the phones at t-mobile but their service isnt that good* oh well. im gettng rid of verizon in decemner and im going to t-mobile anyway. :)
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
- victoriak68 (profile), 21 Oct 2009 @ 3:35pm
  
  Re:
  I'm a Alltel/Verizon customer also. I haven't seen any real problems with my service since the change, but my friends have had issues. As for customer service, getting through to a live person was a nightmare, but when I finally did the rep was quite helpful and even instructed me on a quicker way to get through the next time I needed to talk to a real individual. So far I have no complaints with Verizon, but it's still early in the game.
  [ link to this | view in chronology ]