PrimeCo Personal Communications L.P. has sold its major trading area license and operations in Hawaii to Sprint Corp.-a deal that PrimeCo says has been in the works for nearly 15 months.
“The Hawaii investment was a good one for us,” said Lowell McAdam, president and chief executive officer of PrimeCo. “The competition in the wireless industry is already fierce and increases every day. We need to be able to focus our resources on our core properties … Hawaii is not as strategically critical to us as the others are.”
The deal calls for SprintCom, Sprint’s subsidiary that owns several D- and E-block personal communications services licenses, to purchase the Hawaii MTA PCS license, all Code Division Multiple Access infrastructure, retail operations, employees, customer accounts and associated assets. Terms of the acquisition were not disclosed.
Sprint plans to assume full control of the operation upon regulatory approval and fulfillment of other closing conditions. The two companies anticipate switching the property to the Sprint PCS brand name by the first quarter.
Lowell said PrimeCo had been in discussions with Sprint since 1997. PrimeCo had been interested in a co-marketing effort with Sprint for landline long-distance service, but decided an acquisition would fit better with its strategic plans, said McAdam.
Sprint today is restructuring the PCS business to assume ownership and management control of Sprint PCS-Sprint’s partnership with cable partners Cox Communications Inc., Tele-Communications Inc. and Comcast Corp. That effort will allow Sprint to bundle long-distance, wireless and other products more efficiently.
The acquisition for PrimeCo also eliminates a potential area of market overlap with GTE Corp. Bell Atlantic Corp., 50-percent owner of PrimeCo, plans to merge with GTE Corp. The two must divest properties that violate the Federal Communications Commission 45-megahertz spectrum cap. GTE owns the B-side cellular license in Honolulu.
PrimeCo operates service in Alabama, Florida, Illinois, Louisiana, Texas, Virginia and Wisconsin.
