With just five days to go on its review of AT&T’s pending $780 million acquisition of Atlantic Tele-Networks wireless assets operating under the Alltel brand, the Federal Communications Commission stopped the clock. The FCC says it has received “no detailed responses from AT&T on its plans for transitioning ATN’s significant prepaid customer base.”
Alltel has roughly 180,000 prepaid subscribers, more than 30% of its total customer base. The FCC says it will restart the clock once it receives more information about how AT&T plans to transition these customers from Alltel’s CDMA network to AT&T’s GSM/LTE network. The agency says it has received adequate information from AT&T about how the carrier will transition Alltel’s postpaid customers.
Alltel’s network covers roughly 4.6 million people, and it has about 600,000 subscribers in six states: Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Illinois, Ohio and Idaho. Most of its subscribers live in rural areas.
The deal, which was announced in January, calls for the nation’s second largest carrier to acquire Alltel’s spectrum licenses, retail stores and network assets. The acquisition includes spectrum in the 700 MHz, 850 MHz and 1900 MHz bands. When it announced the deal AT&T said that it expects to upgrade the Alltel network.
Today, AT&T pointed out that it will not be able to make its planned investment in that network until the FCC approves the acquisition. “AT&T is extremely disappointed at the FCC delay today on this small transaction,” the company said in a statement. “AT&T is ready, willing, and able to make significant network investments in these rural territories to bring HSPA+ and LTE services to Allied’s customers, an investment that will not occur but for this transaction.”
Follow me on Twitter.
