Be advised of Cell phone changes!

[OntarioVanMan]

AT&T to buy territories from Verizon for $2.35 billion

NEW YORK — AT&T said Friday it will buy the assets of Verizon Wireless in 79 mainly rural areas for $2.35 billion, a deal that will affect more than 1 million subscribers, including South Dakota.

Verizon Wireless was forced to sell the service areas, which are spread over 18 states, to satisfy regulatory conditions of its purchase of Alltel Corp. The areas are mainly Alltel territories that overlap with Verizon's own coverage, but also some Verizon territories and areas covered by Rural Cellular, another carrier Verizon bought last year.

Dallas-based AT&T, the country's largest telecommunications company, was the expected winner of the auction for the assets.

AT&T is getting spectrum licenses, cell towers and 1.5 million subscribers in the deal. Since AT&T phones aren't compatible with Alltel or Verizon phones, these subscribers will need new phones to use AT&T's network.

AT&T said the deal is expected to close in the fourth quarter. After that, it will take less than a year to convert the areas to its own network technology, which will require about $400 million in investment.

The states with areas included in the deal are Alabama, Arizona, California, Colorado, Iowa, Kansas, Michigan, Minnesota, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New Mexico, North Dakota, South Dakota, Tennessee, Utah, Virginia and Wyoming.


IF you live in these states..

AT&T also said it had agreed to sell five Centennial Communications Corp. service areas in Louisiana and Mississippi to Verizon Wireless for $240 million. AT&T announced plans to acquire Centennial in November 2008, and the deal is awaiting regulatory approval.

 

[greg334]

Wahoo..... now there will be more users with the 'drop call in major markets' feature.

 

[greg334]

I thought that you can take that number anywhere now.

 

[greg334]

If they are selling the area code....in Michigan, I don't want an AT & T phone...they say it's not compatible within their system...I'll have to do some checking

WHAT?

OK OVM, the area code has zero to do with the carrier, to be exact the phone number has zero to do with a carrier. These numbers are used universally through out the entire phone system.

The phone may be different, you may have to upgrade to a multi band phone that will work with their system or may not. But the number will be the same.

If I remember right when cell phones came out, the carriers bought blocks of numbers from the baby bells to have numbers to assign to the cell phones, and since we as a country do things halfa**, right from the start we should have put all the cell phones and fax machines on their own area codes and left the other hard line area codes alone. The cost of just one area code change in my area (we had 9 since) was a lot of money for businesses and being in the alarm business, it cost the alarm companies a few million a year to make these changes.

 

[Wingnut]

A few months ago when I switched our cells from Sprint to AT&T, we kept the same # and was able to keep 2 of our phones because they happened to be the same model/brand that AT&T sold. I had to replace the others.

 

[greg334]

Because of the technology, AT&T uses GSM and Verizon uses CDMA.

Comparison of mobile phone standards - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

[mjolnir131]

the services that are being sold are not verison named companys but smaller subsideries ,so if verison is your carrier they are not giving up any control in those areas what they sold well had to sell atually are double and triple coverage of the same area

 

[greg334]

I know my brain hasn't kicked into gear...I don't want to be an AT&T customer!

I don't want to either but I have three phones on my account, one is for my dad. I was about to change when my contract came up last spring, but my dad decided to visit an AT&T store to just look. He came out with a new phone and I had a three year extension on my contract because they gave him a new phone for free. I wanted his old phone to replace mine, it was hardly used but the girl talked him into a $5 credit for the phone and had him sign for me. I can break the contract but now I am not able to move.

The thing that really p*sses me off about AT&T is their coverage, I get dropped in NYC and LA and even at my dad's house. I am sitting in St Clair Shores visiting and I get a call from my wife and come to find out that the system picked up the cell from Windsor and I get charged Canadian Roaming. I have had poor service with my air card and so on. The tech support is helpful to a point but...... It is not the phones, it is not me, it is them......

 

[Jack_Berry]

i know folks subscribe to phones with american telephone but is anyone using american telegraph in the truck. does it help get loads faster? can you reach out to others? can you click to me ....now? at& may want to drop that final t unless there is a reason for it.