Verizon Wireless to buy Rural Cellular for $2.67 billion
By Darren Murph 
posted July 30th 2007 2:03PM
posted July 30th 2007 2:03PM
Another one bites the dust, so to speak. This time around, we've got Verizon Wireless doing the acquiring, as it has just announced plans to pay $2.67 billion for "one of the nation's largest rural carriers," Rural Cellular. The news comes just over a month after AT&T handed over a staggering amount of its own to pick up Dobson Communications, and this agreement will expand the carrier's coverage "in parts of the East Coast and the South, as well as in Minnesota, North Dakota, South Dakota, Wisconsin, Kansas, Idaho, Washington and Oregon." Verizon did note that it planned on deploying CDMA service in Rural Cellular's existing GSM markets in order to convert customers over, but it also mentioned that the existing GSM networks would remain to "serve the roaming needs of other GSM carrier's customers." Look for the deal to be finalized sometime during the first half of next year, and don't be surprised if we see a few more consolidation efforts go down in the meantime.
Well this is long overdue. Verizon misses out on a lot of potential rural users because their network just doesn't go there quite often. While this won't help me (I live in rural Northern California) it is a step in the right direction. Here's hoping they expand more into rural areas so we have other choices than AT&T.
This is actually very interesting for Vermont. Verizon has always had great coverage in the major cities, but disappointing coverage in most of the state. Unicel has always had great coverage, but they're local, so their nationwide plans were somewhat iffy. I would have expected them to be bought by AT&T giving them an immediate presence in Vermont. Instead all the Unicel customers will be converted over to CDMA, having to replace the hardware they have. If they add CDMA to all the existing towers that Unicel has we'll finally have decent coverage in Vermont!
Vermont has always had CDMA coverage for Verizon through US Cellular's roaming agreement. All this does is guarantees that the choices in ME NH VT will be CDMA or... CDMA..
I can't believe this. Why in the hell would Sean Connery not be in the new Indiana Jones movie. Dammit!!!!
C'mon, I can just see the commericials:
America's number network just got better.
Or
[In a pastoral setting] Can you hear me now?
*cocky smile* Of course you can.
----------
Hey, VZW can't have all the fun, since it's keeping some of the network to have GSM, "other GSM carrier[s]" can claim, their networks got better, too. It's a win/win situation, no?....well, besides those Rural Cellular customers who fancied their GSM coverage.
Unicel just spent a lot of money in the last few years to convert their GSM customers from TDMA. Now yet again they'll be dragged into another 'next generation network'. However, this time around, they don't get to keep their 50$ unlimited phone plans, or their free incoming messages, or their free incoming minutes. They get told instead 50$ gets them 900 minutes.
It's a HUGE difference not just in platform, but the fact that the GOOD plans for rural folks will go away, along with probably several hundred jobs.