AT&T completes acquisition of Alltel Assets

BOISE, USA: AT&T has announced that it has closed its acquisition of Atlantic Tele-Network, Inc.'s U.S. retail wireless assets operated under the Alltel brand. AT&T acquired wireless properties in six states, including spectrum licenses, network assets, retail stores and approximately 590,000 subscribers.

The Alltel network covers approximately 4.5 million people in mainly rural areas in Georgia, Idaho, Illinois, North Carolina, Ohio and South Carolina.

AT&T will immediately begin upgrading the former Alltel network to 4G and plans to move customers to the AT&T network by midyear 2014. Former Alltel subscribers will have access to a wireless network that combines Alltel's local coverage with AT&T's nationwide 4G coverage and to mobile Internet speeds up to 10 times faster than what they have today. AT&T plans to roll out 4G LTE in the former Alltel service area on a market-by-market basis and expects 4G LTE will be widely available in those areas by late 2014. Today, AT&T's 4G LTE network is the nation's fastest and now most reliable and covers more than 225 million people in 397 markets.

AT&T expects its 4G LTE network to reach 300 million people by the end of 2014.

In Idaho, about 6,000 Alltel customers in the following counties will join AT&T: Adams, Boise, Custer, Gem, Idaho, Lemhi, Payette, Valley and Washington. The acquisition of Alltel in Idaho also includes about 5 employees.