() is an
American Telecommunications company with headquarters in
Little Rock ,
Arkansas . Alltel provides wireless services to residential and business customers in 35 states. States with no Alltel service whatsoever include: Alaska, Delaware, Hawaii, Indiana, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Vermont, Washington, and Washington, D.C.
On May 20, 2007, Alltel agreed to be bought out by
TPG Capital, L.P. and
Goldman Sachs for $27.5B.
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With a market cap of $24.79 billion and over 12 million customers as of early 2006, Alltel is the largest regional mobile phone company in America, and the fifth largest mobile phone company overall. The wireless group provides service in parts of 35 states. The company mainly focuses on small to medium-sized cities, but has low-cost roaming agreements with the major national
CDMA carriers, especially
Verizon Wireless and
Sprint-Nextel , in order to provide national service. Reciprocal agreements in turn provide those carriers with coverage in rural areas. When Alltel acquired
Western Wireless in 2005, it gained a large
GSM footprint as well. While it does not offer GSM service to its own customers, Alltel has indicated that it will continue to maintain the GSM footprint (and perhaps even expand it) to provide roaming service to GSM users of other wireless carriers; however, one exception is that as of April 1, 2007, Alltel no longer maintains the GSM footprint in the coverage area it acquired from First Cellular of Southern Illinois. It offered previous GSM customers in the affected area to sign a new agreement with Alltel, requiring affected customers to purchase a new CDMA phone. Alltel advertises itself as "owner and operator of the nation's largest wireless network"; this claim refers to geographical coverage (total square miles covered) of its owned, "native", network rather than number of Alltel customers, population covered, or coverage with roaming agreements.
In 2006, Alltel added 640,000 net customers through internal growth, an 87 percent increase. Post-pay churn was 1.57 percent and total churn was 2 percent, both improved from the previous year. The company also acquired more than 500,000 customers through the purchases of Midwest Wireless, First Cellular of Southern Illinois, Virginia Cellular and Cellular One in Amarillo, Texas.
In 1943, , a small business specializing in installing telephone poles and cabling for telephone companies across
Arkansas , was founded by Charles Miller and Hugh Willbourn, Jr.
Alltel's modern history begins in 1983 when Allied Telephone and Mid-Continent Telephone, founded by Weldon W. Case and his younger brother, Nelson H., merged. The elder Case became Alltel's first chairman, based in
Hudson, Ohio , where Alltel was first headquartered. In 1985, Alltel launched its first wireless system in
Charlotte ,
North Carolina , and by 1993 Alltel had opened its first wireless retail store. Alltel was named to the
S&P 500 Index in 1994. Since 1995, the
Jacksonville Jaguars have played at
Alltel Stadium . By 1996, long-distance service was offered and in 1997 the company's wireless and wireline businesses converged into a single organization.
On , which on
April 10 ,
2006 , announced it will take the name
Windstream Communications . The merger-spinoff process ended
July 17 ,
2006 , when Windstream began operations.
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On
May 20 ,
2007 , Alltel announced an agreement to be sold to two private-equity firms TPG Capital and GS Capital Partners. Under the deal, the two firms will pay $71.50 a share in cash, or 27.5 billion, a 10% premium over Alltel's May 18, 2007, closing price.
Alltel networks consist of analog and digital systems operating primarily on the 800 MHz cellular band, much like
Verizon Wireless . Alltel has recently added a few 1900 MHz PCS sites in various places, such as Jacksonville, Florida and Wichita, Kansas for greater system capacity. Native Alltel markets consist of both analog (
AMPS ) and digital (
CDMA ) technologies. Select markets have been outfitted with
3G 1xEV-DO digital technology, which allows for additional battery life and faster download times when using Internet or BREW-based applications. AMPS is still in place and in use in most places, but the company acknowledges that it is aggressively converting analog customers to digital technology. In 2005, an Alltel spokesman stated that only 15% of its customer base still uses analog. Alltel has yet to release official plans in response to the
FCC decision stating that by
March 1 ,
2008 A and B side carriers are no longer required to support analog.
To further extend service to its customers, Alltel uses roaming agreements with competing providers to provide reliable coast-to-coast service. Roaming agreements in the US are primarily with
Verizon Wireless and
Sprint Nextel , but other arrangements are in place with
U.S. Cellular ,
AT&T Mobility (mostly for AMPS),
Unicel , and other
CDMA wireless providers. They also have agreements with most Canadian cellular providers, such as
Telus and
Bell Mobility . Since many of these roaming partners operate in the 800 MHz or 1900 MHz CDMA band, Alltel customers on national calling plans are required to use tri-mode (800 AMPS, 800 CDMA, 1900 CDMA) or dual band (800 CDMA, 1900 CDMA) handsets.
On
May 9 ,
2006 , Alltel and
Sprint Nextel agreed on a new nationwide roaming partnership. (Press releases:
Alltel ;
Sprint )
Unlike Alltel's voice and 1xRTT roaming agreement with
Verizon Wireless , the new reciprocal roaming agreement is for both voice and
1xEV-DO data roaming coverage. This agreement gives Alltel customers access to Sprint's voice, 1xRTT, and 1xEV-DO networks and gives Sprint customers access to Alltel's denser rural 1xEV-DO voice and data coverage. This agreement is the first of its kind between wireless carriers in the United States.
On
June 7 ,
2007 , Alltel announced that its customers can access the Internet and corporate networks through their data-card equipped laptops in the nation’s major metropolitan areas, at broadband speeds. Alltel’s roaming agreements give its customers access to wireless broadband service in the nation’s largest population centers, including
New York ,
Chicago ,
Los Angeles ,
Boston ,
Philadelphia , and
Washington D.C.
There are currently Alltel-owned and operated network in 35
State s; Alltel currently has roaming agreements in place to provide coverage in all 50 states including
Puerto Rico and the
U.S. Virgin Islands . Alltel also has agreements with cellular providers in Canada. Alltel's free night minutes start at 9:00pm, unless upgraded to a 7:00pm nights plan or add-on.
Alltel also now offers coverage plans for all of
North America , the "North American Freedom" plans. With roaming agreements in Mexico and Canada. Note that "My Circle" and "Mobile to Mobile" calling only applies within the
United States . Outside of the US it is considered part of the anytime minutes in a plan.
- List of coverage for Mexican cities provided by Alltel (coverage maps available are not accurate enough) - http://alltel.com/docs/MexicoCityList.pdf
Alltel is the first cell phone company to make fun of other major companies. It started out when Alltel used lookalikes of rival cell phone companies' primary advertising characters. After a little bit of trouble, they placed a message at the beginning of these commercials saying "THESE ARE LOOKALIKES". After that, Alltel started a series of commercials involving Chad, Alltel's spokesman (played by comedian ,
AT&T ,
T-Mobile , and
Sprint . The parodied competitors take the forms of four stereotypical
Geek s who are perpetually frustrated by their failures and less popularity, even going so far as to harass and threaten him, albeit with less than effective results. They drive the same van used in the movie "School of Rock"
The promotional campaign features this notice on television and the website: "Our lawyers would like to inform you some of the characters you see here are not associated with Alltel. They are look-alikes. The characters, not our lawyers." The first commercial has an Alltel representative named Chad welcoming the spokespeople of the other Top 5 wireless carriers ( introduced "
My Faves " in the
Fall of 2006.
May 22, 2007, Alltel Press Release: Alltel announced that it will be the first carrier to introduce City ID, an enhanced caller ID feature that matches any incoming wireless call with the city and state where the incoming number is registered. The application will initially be available on the LGAX275, but will eventually be integrated with all new handsets operated by Alltel in the near future.
On March 1, 2007 Alltel announced that they were the first U.S. carrier to offer
AskMeNow across all handsets. The partnership provides customers, including those with smart phones, immediate access to the AskMeNow question-answer service.
On
April 21 ,
2006 Alltel launched a unique program called "My Circle".
My Circle is a free and optional feature for customers that subscribe to National/Greater Freedom calling plans starting at $59.99 and sign up for online account access. (Numbers can only be added and modified through the Alltel website.) A customer selects a maximum of 10 numbers on other U.S.
Landline and
Wireless Network s that they can call and not use up
Airtime or pay additional charges.
900 Number s,
Directory Assistance services, and a customer's own number or voice-mail access number are prohibited in
My Circle . These calls must originate and end within the customer's calling area.
On ,
Virgin Mobile or
AT&T GoPhone . Features that make U Prepaid unique are that it allows the customer to customize their plan with text messaging and unlimited calls to a certain number. U Prepaid allows roaming on
Sprint ,
Verizon ,
US Cellular , and other CDMA networks.
1998
- 360 Communications ( Illinois ) - wireless properties and assets, merger adds 2.6 million customers in 15 states
1999
- Standard Group, Inc. ( Cornelia, Georgia ) - merger adds more than 71,000 local telephone lines
- Aliant Communications ( Lincoln, Nebraska ) - $1.8 billion merger
- Liberty Cellular ( Kansas ) - $600 million merger
2000
2002
2003
2005
2006
- First Cellular Of Southern Illinois ( Illinois ) - Alltel purchased First Cellular for $14-15 million in cash.
- Palmetto MobileNet, L.P. ( North Carolina ) ( South Carolina ) - Alltel has purchased from Palmetto MobileNet, L.P., wireless partnerships that cover approximately 2 million people in North and South Carolina. Alltel already managed and owned 50 percent of each of the 10 partnerships and has purchased the remaining interests from Palmetto. The partnerships include 34 counties across South Carolina and seven counties in Western North Carolina .
- Alltel completes purchase of Midwest Wireless
- In Summer 2006 Alltel's , customers were migrated in non-Alltel markets. (see article below)
2007
- Alltel agrees to be acquired by TPG Inc. and the private equity division of Goldman Sachs Group for $27.5 billion.1
- Simple Freedom Wireless merges with Alltel "U Prepaid" to form Alltel U Personalized Prepaid. (see article below)
On
January 10 ,
2005 , Alltel announced it would buy
Western Wireless (primary operator of the
Cellular One brand name) for $6 billion in a stock-and-cash transaction. The deal would bring in an additional 1.4 million domestic wireless customers bringing the company's total wireless customer base to 10 million in 33 states, making Alltel the fifth-largest wireless operator in the United States. The merger would also bring an additional 1.6 million international customers from Western Wireless' overseas wireless ventures. These ventures, however, are being sold. Since both companies operate on
CDMA technology, no major network integration issues were expected. According to Alltel CEO Scott Ford, "probably much less than 10 percent" of Western Wireless' 4,000 workers would face job cuts. The merger closed in August 2005; the Cellular One brand name was sold to
Dobson Cellular in December 2005.
U Prepaid is prepaid service from Alltel Wireless. In June 2007 Simple Freedom Wireless announced that it would move its customers to Alltel U Prepaid accounts to create Alltel U Personalized Prepaid. In July 2007 the merger was complete. The service is sold at Wal-Mart and some Sam's Club stores. Some Simple Freedom customers in non-Alltel markets were migrated to Verizon Wireless prepay accounts in Summer 2006. New rate options and features are now available to Simple Freedom customers.http://www.simplefreedom.net/SimpleFreedom/uprepaid.html
- Alltel is the primary sponsor of the #12 Dodge Avenger driven by Ryan Newman in the NASCAR NEXTEL Cup series. {Link without Title}
- ---This sponsorship was signed in 2000 under a contract between Alltel and Penske Racing. Greg Penske had joined the Board of Directors of Alltel and recommended the team switch from Herzog Racing to Penske Racing. On June 19, 2003, Alltel was banned from NASCAR sponsorship at the top level, but this current deal is grandfathered, due to the fact that Sprint/Nextel agreeded to sponsor NASCAR's top series. The firm may not change names, nor may they switch teams under agreement of this grandfather clause.
- Alltel has sponsored professional fisherman Scott Rook during the 2006 CITGO Bassmaster Tournament Trail.
- Alltel Pavilion At Walnut Creek , Raleigh, North Carolina
- Alltel Arena , North Little Rock, Arkansas
- Alltel Ice Den , Scottsdale, Arizona
- Alltel Pavilion , Stuart C. Siegel Center, Virginia Commonwealth University , Richmond, Virginia
- Maxwell Field At Alltel Stadium , Winona State University , Winona, Minnesota
- Alltel Center , Mankato, Minnesota
