Report: Alltel, Western Wireless in Talks
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Alltel Corp., the nation's sixth-largest wireless carrier, is in advanced negotiations about buying Western Wireless Corp., a Northwest regional carrier which operates mainly under the Cellular One brand, for roughly &#36;4 billion, according to a published report.
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Sprint Nextel and Clearwire are back in talks about a possible WiMax joint venture after&#160;a previous attempt to work together fell apart last year, the Wall Street Journal reported on Tuesday, citing unnamed sources.Sprint&#39;s continued downhill slide, spurred by defecting Nextel customers, means the deal would make even more sense now, Nadine Manjaro, a senior analyst with ABI Research, told IDG News Service.&quot;They&#39;ve lost so much from iDEN (Integrated Digital Enhanced Network) defections, they don&#39;t really have the money to invest in WiMax,&quot; she said. iDEN is the push-to-talk technology used in Nextel&#39;s network, which Sprint bought in 2005 and continues to struggle to digest.Clearwire and Sprint, which own the bulk of 2.5GHz spectrum in the country, said in July last year that&#160;they planned to jointly build a nationwide WiMax network. But in November the companies said they had failed to reach a final agreement, and terminated their letter of intent.Since then, Sprint hasn&#39;t managed to improve its fortunes. The third-largest operator in the U.S., Sprint&#39;s subscriber base declined by 337,000 in the quarter ending Sept. 30. &quot;Sprint is not doing so well now,&quot; Manjaro said.Rather than building a scaled-down network with the assets it has, Sprint would do better if it partnered with Clearwire and also opened up to outside investors, said Manjaro, who worked for Sprint until last April.From the beginning, she said, Sprint hoped to attract investors to help build the network. &quot;They realized it would take a lot of money,&quot; she said. Attracting other parties has now become more urgent. &quot;They didn&#39;t anticipate being in the financial position they are in now,&quot; she said.Ideally, Sprint and Clearwire would create a joint venture that would allow each company to retain a stake in the company but also attract other companies, possibly Intel or Google, to provide needed capital, she said. A combined company would be able to negotiate better deals from vendors, she said.Clearwire has already built wireless broadband networks in 16 U.S. states. Sprint has launched services in Baltimore, Chicago, and Washington, D.C., under the Xohm brand.Spokespeople from Clearwire and Sprint declined to comment on the possibility of any renewed talks.
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Cellular giant Alltel Corp. said Monday it is buying Western Wireless Corp. in a &#36;4.4 billion cash and stock deal expected to make it the fifth-largest U.S. wireless company.
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Telecommunications companies Swisscom AG and Telekom Austria AG are in talks over a possible merger, Swisscom said in a statement late Tuesday.
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Wall Street was abuzz Friday over a potential merger between Sprint and Nextel, though the companies declined to comment on a slew of news reports that they are negotiating to combine to create a celluar provider that would almost rival Cingular Wireless and Verizon Wireless in size.
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Sprint and Nextel, two of the top five US mobile phone carriers, are negotiating a merger, say people close to the proposed deal. The combined company would be worth about $70bn.
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News reports indicate that the two sides may be preparing to sit down at the bargaining table once more to combine their respective WiMAX networks.
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A former Qwest Communications executive is negotiating a possible settlement of SEC charges against him. The Securities and Exchange Commission has accused Michael Felicissimo of fraud that led to overstated wireless revenues at Qwest.
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Reuters reports that Time Warner Inc. is in talks to offer cell-phone service over Sprint Corp.'s network on a trial basis early in 2005, a source familiar with the matter said on Wednesday.
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SPRINT and Time Warner are discussing a deal that would allow the cable provider to offer mobile phone service, the companies said.
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Merrill Lynch Global Private Equity   was looking at a possible bid for CanWest Global  Communications Corp.'s  stake in Australian broadcaster  Ten Network Holdings Ltd. , a source familiar with the  situation said.
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New deal between the two companies is another sign of the wireless industry's focus on the W-CDMA standard.
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US mobile operators Sprint and Nextel are in talks about a $70bn merger (Â£36bn) according to newspaper reports. The deal would create the country&#39;s third-biggest mobile operator which would have 38.5 million
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Wireless Internet provider Clearwire Corp. and cellular operator Sprint Nextel Corp. have reportedly restarted talks to combine their high-speed wireless WiMax networks.
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U.S. antitrust authorities on  Thursday approved rural telephone operator Alltel Corp.'s   $1.075 billion deal to buy Midwest Wireless Holdings.
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Alltel (AT:NYSE - news - research) has agreed to pay Cingular $170 million for portions of the former AT&amp;T Wireless business in six states as part of a mandated divestiture.
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Rural telephone company Alltel Corp.  AT.N on Monday said it would acquire Western Wireless Corp.  WWCA.O for $6 billion in a move that will increase its  customers in the Western United States and make it the  fifth-largest U.S. wireless carrier.