Tomorrow has always been a bit tricky to forecast. Did John Walter know on his first day at R.R. Donnelley that one day he would be picked to run AT&T Corp?
Keeping that in mind, I give you my predictions for RCR’s Top 20 PCS Carriers in 2006. Only it’s no longer a Top 20. It’s a Top 10. Consolidation turned into mass consolidation. And it’s not PCS Carriers. It’s Wireless Carriers. Following AT&T’s lead, operators are not separating their PCS subscriber numbers from their cellular numbers.
As the paper goes to press, a rumor circulates that Craig McCaw may buy a large operator, which would thrust Nextel into 10th place on the list.
RCR’s Top 10 Wireless Carriers-2006.
1. Sprint-LuNoTel Inc. TV fanatics switch from cable service to Direct TV. TCI is not able to meet its financial obligations. Lucent and Nortel become equity partners in Sprint’s operations. The company reports 36.5 million customers.
2. AT&T. The business counts 26.9 million wireless users and one new chairman.
3. MCI. MCI secretly buys up NextWave stock (the company actually went public in 1998) until it makes Janice Obuchowski and Allen Salmasi a deal they can’t refuse. MCI has 19 million users.
4. PrimeCo. Bell Atlantic-Nynex merges with the AirTouch-U S West venture. The company is still squabbling over its new name. Its 18 million customers don’t seem to care.
5. Omni. This Pacific Bell Mobile Services-Omnipoint combo gets along famously, with head honchos on opposite sides of the coast and more than 11 million GSM users.
6. South Corp. BellSouth and Southwestern Bell merge their wireless operations after executives at both companies notice the similarities in their names. The company reports 9 million customers.
7. Red, White and Blue Co. Parent company TDS tells patriotic subsidiaries U S Cellular Communications and American Portable Communications to share their 6 million wireless clients.
8. Western etc. Western Wireless Corp. merges with a number of independent cellular and PCS carriers, posting 5.2 million customers. The notable exception is Vanguard Cellular, which refuses to be purchased.
9. GTE. The carrier continues to buy and sell properties, trying to find the perfect cluster. In between deals, GTE reports 4.8 million users.
10. Ameritech. Doing just fine on its own, thank-you, Ameritech says it offers service to 3.5 million people in the Midwest. Roaming is not allowed.
