“AT&T, thwarted by regulators nearly two years ago on a planned $39 billion acquisition of T-Mobile USA, is back in the merger hunt, albeit with a much smaller target,” William Alden reports for The New York Times. “The telecommunications giant said on Friday that it had agreed to acquire its smaller rival Leap Wireless International for nearly $1.2 billion, the latest sign of consolidation in the telecommunications industry.”
“AT&T is paying $15 a share in cash for Leap, a prepaid cellphone service provider — a premium of 88 percent from Leap’s closing price on Friday,” Alden reports. “Under the terms of the deal, AT&T would gain 5 million new customers and acquire Leap network, licenses and retail stores. Leap had $2.8 billion of net debt as of April 15.”
Alden reports, “Leap, based in San Diego, operates under the Cricket brand name, which AT&T plans to retain. Its network covers about 96 million people in 35 states. ‘Cricket’s employees, operations and distribution will jump start AT&T’s expansion into the highly competitive prepaid segment,’ said Brad Burns, AT&T spokesman… If the deal goes through, Cricket customers will get access to AT&T’s 4G mobile network, and AT&T will expand Cricket’s reach. For AT&T, the deal will give it access to the prepaid market.”
Read more in the full article here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews readers too numerous to mention individually for the heads up.]
Yay!
Less choice! Higher prices!
I’ve stuck with AT&T for years now because I’m grandfathered in with Unlimited Data, and that’s hard to walk away from… but more and more, these deals and their policies make me want to think about alternatives.
Glad i picked virgin mobile when I finally dumped At&t. Would have sucked to end up right back with them had I gone with Cricket.
Love having an iphone with a much smaller monthly bill.
Why would they pay a premium price for a company that has lost over a billion dollars? It seems that if you wanted to move into the prepaid market, move into the prepaid market.
It’s for the spectrum.
It’s so they can over charge more customers
Charles Ergen needs to act quickly and embrace T-mobile with a good offer, they are receptive.
For a starter there are a couple that are well known and most anti-virus programs will protect you from these:.
The issue was that Norton was a resource hog meaning that it took up most of your memory (RAM) when
doing a scan or running in the background. It was since been released for free
to the public under the Open – Solaris project.
Nooooooooooo…..
So the Death Star is swallowing yet another one. They are soooo freakin big and they still can’t make money or have at least half decent service plans for its costumers. Their data plans are just a TOTAL JOKE. So incredibly expensive and with a tiny tiny cap…