Thanks nascardad that is good to know and the way you put it I do agree with you. Sounds good to me. Hey and welcome to the Alltel family it will be done soon enough!

nascardad said:
WWC does own it's own GSM towers, and it is for roaming revenues, Alltel woudl be foolish not to expand on that, right now wwc is the only carrier in the nation that has all three major technologies operating on there system. Guess who the only carrier is now? From what I understand from meatings that I have been a part of Alltel is considering expanding on this because it is a great source of roaming revenues in cdma markets that folks with GSM phones cannot get service.

While that does seem to be a good precedent, it would behoove Alltel to actually switch those towers to CDMA. Alltel would have too many issues if they decided to keep the network using 3 different technologies. They would...
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WWC does not have customers on GSM we charge other peoples customers for using them. Alltel customers will not be using the GSM service. Take for instance in my area, I know several people that have Cingular, though Cingular does not provide service in our area, they can use our towers, that is roaming revenue. That is all they are for is roaming revenue. We love revenue, They are already in place and in Kansas and Nebraska the DOJ has said that Alltel can continue to operate GSM those do not have to be divested.

According the 1st quarter earnings release GSM roaming revenues accounted for 38% of WWC roamin revenues. That is a good chunk of money not to take advantage of.

WOW those are some facts that I did not know. Thanks for pointing those out. If you are correct then it would be Alltel's best interest to keep them and without a customer base the maintenance must be minimal so I am all for it then! 😲

nascardad said:
According the 1st quarter earnings release GSM roaming revenues accounted for 38% of WWC roamin revenues. That is a good chunk of money not to take advantage of.

Even so, remember: Alltel isn't a money-driven venture like Cingular, Verizon, or many of the others. They are a customer-centric company. They want the best for their customers, not necessarrily their bottom-lines (they do look at that aspect, as the two often go hand-in-hand). We had a meeting with our RVP on Friday about this very topic. He said that, once the stock holders vote to approve the buyout, and after the ATTWS properties have been fully transitioned over, they will begin to convert the GSM towers over to CDMA.

They...
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That seems logical, if that is what they are doing with ATTW towers. If they turned them to CDMA wouldn't they have to divest those towers in KS, NE, AR, that is part of the DOJ agreement is that they can keep the GSM towers. I would think that if they switched them to CDMA it would be a violation of the DOJ requirements. I may be wrong though. It seems that we both make good points speedywalk.

You guys make great points. I am curious to see how this ends up playing out in the end. 🙂

Just to add on to what we have already discussed. Here is what Scott Ford had to say about it in a release.

"Our transition teams are busy at work, and as soon as practical, we will launch our national retail plans in these markets and begin exploring opportunities to utilize Western's expertise with GSM technology to capitalize on roaming opportunities in the heritage Alltel markets."

Where did you get that? The portal? That is good info I want to see the article! (Even though i have probs read it and do not remember)

You can find it on the transcript of the earnings call. Just use the Find feature, and search GSM you will eventually find it. there is no page numbers on it or else I would tell you the page #.

Thanks. Your a good guy nascardad.