AT&T reportedly eyeing post-merger Verizon Wireless assets
By Donald Melanson 
posted Feb 4th 2009 1:32PM
posted Feb 4th 2009 1:32PM
As you may recall, one of the requirements that Verizon had to agree with in order to complete its little acquisition of Alltel was that it must offload some $3 billion in wireless assets to avoid becoming too monolithic, and it looks like there's already a number of bidders angling for a piece of the action. The biggest of those, by far, is AT&T, which is apparently looking to pick up as big a chunk of the assets as it is able to and, according to The Wall Street Journal, it's in a good position to do just that. Other interested parties reportedly include a joint bid from the Carlyle Group and Kohlberg Kravis & Roberts & Co, a separate bid from Providence Equity Partners LLC, and at least one unnamed cable provider. Any of those bids, however, would still be subject to approval by the Department of Justice, with AT&T sure to draw the most scrutiny of the lot.[Via The Wall Street Journal]
What would they do with the CDMA technology? Non cell phone stuff like ATM's?
i think the actual towers and the land are worth more than the physical antennas. That is if they are giving out physical property, im a bit confused as to what is going on here
Agrees with Dean.
They probably want the area, land, customers.
Maybe they will wait until 4G before they switch it from CDMA to GSM.....
Many towers actually carry antennas for both GSM and CDMA technology with agreements in place. Verizon may own many more. It would end up being a change in ownership and management of the towers, but nothing else.
The same goes any other asset.
Essentially customers will see nothing change because of this (except for Alltel customers).
This happens all the time between Comcast and Time Warner. In many markets they were 50/50 partners on the infrastructure, but divvied up the management and billing responsibilities.
I think the assets that were sold off were actually GSM assets aquired through this transaction as well as the Rural Cellular buy. Rural, if memory serves, had both CDMA and GSM. I don't think they are getting rid of any CDMA assets.
By the way, when they talk about "assets" they are not just talking about towers and switches. The greater asstes are the lisences, which is what is really up for sale.
They're going to offload the problem customers!
So if you've called in to Verizon to complain a bunch, enjoy AT&T!
They're in a good position to buy as much as they are able to? Doesn't that kind of go without saying?
$3 Billion worth of WHICH wireless assets exactly? They arent very specific....
See here: http://news.vzw.com/news/2009/01/pr2009-01-09.html
What does the Carlyle Group do? I know they purchased Verizon's Landline business in Hawaii. Aren't they some how connected with Bush or Chenney?
And Clinton, Carter, and previous Bush, and many aspects of both Political Parties.
What do they actually do?
Well, they are an M&A (merger and acquisition) entity. Just like Berkshire Hathaway, Bain Capital, Cerebus Group.
They just own other companies they like and let them run and make money for them.
Imagine the Carlyle Group as your mobile service provider?
Douche chills I tell ya, douche chills ;^/...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carlyle_Group
"make money for them."
You mean FROM them.
The Carlyle group is a private equity firm. That basically means that they're kind of like a bank for the mega rich. People with a first name of 'Sheikh' give them billions of dollars with which they buy things - companies, stocks, property, whatever. The money they make on those assets are paid back to the investors as interest (similar to how a bank invests with your money and gives you a cut of the profit).
In this case, they could buy some of the cell network infrastructure and lease it to AT&T and whoever else will pay. The idea is that they make it a profit on it, they're not going to start their own network or anything like that (they could, but there's much more risk tied with that).
Please-oh-please-oh-please let AT&T buy the assets in Fargo that Verizon is selling. I want a damn iPhone and I want it now!
So Verizon has to sell stuff to avoid being a monopoly. & they're going to sell it to ATT- the company that *DEFINES* telco monopolies? I totally don't get this.
It's like if they made Google sell stuff & Microsoft bought it.
they have to sell parts of individual markets to keep from being monopolies in them, this has nothing to do with being a complete monopoly. there are a bunch of towns where in south Georgia for instance that are only covered by Alltel and Verizon, it would be bad for those customers to not have a choice of which carrier they wanted to be with. so to keep that from happening Verizon has to sell those customers to another provider.
The wireless industry is a duopoly. AT&T and Verizon are the two big contenders. Yes, Sprint and T-Mobile are national carriers, but AT&T and Verizon pretty much dictate the wireless world. Sprint and T-Mobile both have lower rates, AT&T and Verizon are identically the same rate-wise.
ohhhhh.... KKR? Man, Carlyle group? oh man! KKR has there hands in everything, Western union, First Data... And the Carlyle Group? lawlers, Cheneyism at it's best...
How more people does Sprint need to lose before AT&T or Verizon can buy them without worrying about the monopoly issues?
They'd have to lose a ton of customers, like 30 million more.
Even if the FCC said that either company could snatch up Sprint and not face antitrust scrutiny, Sprint's financials are so bad, I don't think either company would want to touch them. While Big Blue and Big Red add around 2 million customers a quarter and have increasing profits, Sprint loses about 750,000 a quarter and has falling profit margins and increasing churn.
In a failing economy, AT&T and Verizon are two of the safest companies.
I am confused... How are they going to make 2.1 million customers switch to another carrier (it says 2.1 million on Verizon's press report). I didn't know people were "assets" and I didn't know they could be told who their provider would be.
we'll when a provider purchases another, your are pretty much telling them you have to be us now, or go elsewhere. Which is pretty much the same here. In those places where there is only Verizon and Altell, it will just be Verizon now which would make it a monopoly in that area. So now they have to give up some assets so someone else can come into the game. It makes sense. I'm sure not everyone wants Verizon, they just have to get what's there.
They're buying the assets, which include customers, spectrum licenses, and owned towers/antennas.
I see no reason why the DOJ would reject this. In most of the markets AT&T would be getting, they have local service in the popluation centers or rely on Alltel's GSM network for roaming. This would be bringing in another competitor, which gets the FCC and DOJ wet.
Sooner or later Verizon needs to transfer to GSM... although I don't fucking know what At&t is doing exactly at the moment.. they have opportunity for huge revenues here by converting their services to 100% fiberoptics and moving into the 4G and even WiMax market BEFORE Verizon. This year is At&t's chance to get way ahead its competitors but it doesn't look like they're taking advantage of all the opportunities they have here. When life gives you lemons, make freaking lemonade!
Verizon Wireless is already doing LTE test in some places, there probably going to go straight to LTE from CDMA with a bunch of CDMA/LTE phones then just LTE phones.
Please dont let that cable provider be Comcast.
Just curious but does anyone know if Vodafone could buy the assets from Verizon and then have Vodafone as an MVNO under Verizon Wireless or would that be a conflict of interest since they both own stock in the others company.