CHICAGO—U.S. Cellular Corp.’s parent company, Telephone and Data Systems Inc., is reportedly delaying plans to buy the 18 percent stake in the wireless carrier that TDS does not currently own.
Bloomberg News reported that Leroy Carlson Jr., president and chief executive office of TDS, indicated that U.S. Cellular’s stock had risen too high and that TDS would wait until the companies’ stock prices “are more in line.” U.S. Cellular’s stock has climbed steadily for more than a year, from trading below $50 per share in January, 2005, to about $62 currently.
Carlson also said that as far as U.S. Cellular’s network strategy, the company does not plan to introduce CDMA2000 1x EV-DO upgrades to its network until 2007 at the earliest, when EV-DO Revision A is expected to be available. U.S. Cellular is testing EV-DO Revision 0 in its Milwaukee market, but Carlson said the company had experienced “no disruptive effects” from not having wide-spread wireless broadband—and that even when Rev. A does become available, U.S. Cellular will first test the technology to make certain that enough customers want the service for it to be profitable. U.S. Cellular currently uses 1x technology for data services.
Both U.S. Cellular and TDS have completed the financial restatements that they had started last November, and now are catching up on regulatory filings that were delayed by the need to finish the restatements, Carlson said at a conference in New York earlier this week. He said that the companies expect to file their 10-K forms for 2005 “imminently,” and that the filing for the first quarter of 2006 should be done by the end of June.
