Acquisition, Wireless Carrier | featured news

Dish Network Corp, the No. 2 U.S. satellite television provider, on Monday offered to buy wireless service provider Sprint Nextel Corp for $25.5 billion in cash and stock, a move that could inspire other telecommunications or video companies to consider their own prospects of combining.

Dish Network Corp. is trying to snag U.S. wireless carrier Sprint Nextel Corp. away from its Japanese suitor in recognition of the way satellite dishes are losing their relevance in the age of cellphones that play YouTube videos.

AT&T agreed to buy U.S. spectrum licenses covering 18 states from rival Verizon Wireless for $1.9 billion in cash.

AT&T said Tuesday that it has reached a deal to buy the Alltel U.S. wireless operations for about $780 million to boost its spectrum in rural areas.Click to Continue »

AT&T Inc. on Monday said that it had agreed to sell a majority stake in its Yellow Pages business to the private-equity firm Cerberus Capital for $950 million.

AT&T is in talks to sell a majority stake in its Yellow Pages business to Cerberus, in a deal that would value the business at as much as $1.5 billion. TPG has also held talks about buying the business.

T-Mobile USA, which just had its acquisition by AT&T blocked by regulators, is now urging the federal government to block another deal in the wireless world: Verizon's planned purchase spectrum from cable companies for $3.6 billion.

The Justice Department's move to block AT&T Inc. from buying
T-Mobile USA is motivated by the desire to keep a low-priced
competitor in the game. But that's a game T-Mobile is losing.

Looking at AT&T and its planned acquisition, it’s fair to suggest that it could not attract the financing necessary to complete the purchase if its plan was to raise prices. Not only would such a move be unrealistic given the existence of Verizon and other smaller competitors, it would also be self-defeating for high prices signaling to those outside the mobile-phone space a potentially profitable competitive opportunity.

AT&T announced on Sunday that it agreed to buy T-Mobile USA from Deutsche Telekom, in a $39 billion deal that will reshape the cellular telephone industry. The merger — one of the largest since the onset of the financial crisis — would combine the second and fourth largest cellular carriers in the nation, bringing together AT&T’s 95.5 million wireless subscribers with T-Mobile’s 33.7 million customers.