Cingular nabs AT&T Wireless for $41B

[adamz]

"Cingular Wireless said Tuesday it agreed to buy AT&T Wireless Services Inc. for about $41 billion, topping a rival $38 billion bid from Vodafone of Britain, in a deal that would create the nation's biggest mobile phone company. "

[ChrisSpera]

Glad you caught this, because if you didn't post on this, I was going to. :D

This is an all cash deal, and possibly the largest in US history. Cingular also assumes about $6.0BB in debt from ATT Wireless.

Interesting that Vodophone dropped out (tho even ATT and Cingular are not certain EXACTLY when they dropped out...before or after the $41BB bid). In order to top Cingular's bid, Vodophone would have had to sell their 45% stake in Verizon Wireless...something they just were NOT going to do....


Christopher Spera

[adamz]

I wonder if Cingular minutes will roll over into the merger. :)

I hope Cingular's alliance with T-Mobile will carry through as well. I'm all for more GSM coverage in the US! But isn't Cingular still mostly TDMA?

[ctitanic]

Originally posted by adamz
I'm all for more GSM coverage in the US! But isn't Cingular still mostly TDMA?

That´s the point. I thought that we AT&T users were going to gain in this deal but how... the Cingular Towers use TDMA so we are not going to see in anyway anything better in our signal reception. :confused:

[adamz]

That would really suck if Cingular haults AT&T's move to GSM! If memory serves me Cingular has GSM in California and the Carolina's, but I havn't heard much about them working on moving to GSM. :(