Verizon-Alltel Merger

So. Verizon's buying Alltel. Worried your Alltel service is going away? It's looking like that may not happen until 2009 - or even 2010.
I started thinking about this when I saw the news story today that the Department of Justice is asking Verizon to divest certain markets they bought as part of their purchase of Rural Cellular, which happened in July 2007. Yes, it's been 11 months and that acquisition still hasn't closed.
But that's par for the course for wireless company acquisitions. They're complicated. AT&T and Cingular proposed to merge on Feb. 17, 2004. The merger closed on October 26, and the company finally retired the AT&T brand on April 26, 2005. So that's 14 months. T-Mobile recently picked up SunCom; the merger was announced on September 17, it closed on Feb. 22, and T-Mobile told me recently that SunCom would vanish sometime around the third quarter of this year. So - a year, again. Alltel said they were buying Western Wireless in January 2005. The merger closed in August, but the brand didn't go away until 2006.
There are some complicated political issues that Verizon/Alltel must work out, too.
Let's start with the currently unsettled political situation. Verizon and Alltel have said they hope to close the deal by the end of the year. That requires a lot of government approvals. Hm - what's going to be happening in the federal government between early November 2008 and mid January 2009? Lots of personnel shuffling, and very little decision making. That's one brake on things.
There's a general rule that the FCC has followed so far, that one carrier shouldn't own both halves of the 850 Mhz cellular block in a market. So I'm assuming the FCC will ask Verizon to divest markets where both they and Alltel hold 850 Mhz spectrum. According to these maps, that includes counties in pretty much every state in the Mountain time zone, Minnesota, Iowa, Michigan, Ohio, Virginia, both Carolinas, Georgia and Alabama. They'll have to find buyers for that spectrum, too. Could that happen? Sure. Will it take time? You bet.
Once they've sorted out that mess, they're going to have to deal with the fact that Verizon has a reputation for relatively high rates. Great coverage, terrific customer service, but high rates. If I were a senator from, say, Arkansas, you bet I'd run an inquest into whether rates for existing Alltel customers in Little Rock will shoot up once they try to renew their plans.
So fear not, Alltel subscribers, at least not in the short term. Verizon has a long row to hoe before they can gobble up and completely eradicate everything you like about your cell phone service.