Verizon to buy Alltel

Alright folks; it’s official. Verizon Wireless has stated that it will buy Alltel for $28.1 billion. Verizon has made a deal according to which it will pay $5.9 billion to Alltel to acquire its equity and assume a whopping $22.2 billion of its debt.

This acquisition will make Verizon Wireless the biggest cellular operator in the U.S. Verizon has 66.8 million subscribers now and by acquiring Alltel, it will add another 13.2 million to its subscriber base, thereby making it 80 million subscribers in total. The current number one operator, AT&T, has around 72 million subscribers.

An interesting aspect to this deal is, Alltel is probably the only company in the corporate history of America to have changed ownership so quickly. Last year, Alltel was acquired by the Texas Pacific Group and the private equity arm of Goldman Sachs for a similar price. This year, it has been acquired by Verizon.

Expectedly, this news has not made a big splash in the market as everyone and his mom knew that this was on the cards. This acquisition tale has been going on for years now and finally, it is official. If you remember, Verizon was actually keen to acquire Alltel last year, but Vodafone, its wireless partner, rejected the deal. But then, Verizon has managed to get what it wanted.

I think this is a perfect set up for Verizon for two reasons. First, both Alltel and Verizon use the same technology – CDMA. Second, Alltel has a good subscriber base in areas which are not covered by Verizon currently. So, it will extend Verizon’s network coverage platform. What do you think?

Categories: All things mobile phones.

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Iamota Impact - Mobile marketing service for retailers

Iamota, a mobile application service provider, recently launched a service called ‘Iamota Impact’. This service is targeted toward retailers and small business owners and it will help them come up with effective mobile marketing campaigns. Iamota is confident that their service will find lots of takers as mobile advertising is considered hot in the retail sector.

With this service, retailers will be able to create an account in Iamota’s website. Through this, they will have access to a number of mobile users with whom they can interact and try to sell their products or services. They can send text messages with product information, discount coupons, contests, polls, and so on. All this is done on an opt-in basis, which means mobile users will have the choice to opt in or opt out of any of these marketing campaigns. This means a win-win situation for both the retailer and the end user. While the retailer is able to target his consumers more effectively, the consumers have the right to either accept or deny his offers, thus making it extremely easy for both the parties involved.

As of now, this service works with Alltel, AT&T, Boost, Sprint, T-Mobile, Verizon, and Virgin Mobile. The makers of Iamota Impact are confident that their service will reduce the complexity in the mobile channel and help business owners reach their target consumers more effectively without spending big bucks.

In my opinion, services like this, which are targeted toward retailers and small business owners, are extremely important for the growth of mobile marketing and advertising industry, as retail industry is one industry which can use mobile advertising and marketing very effectively to its advantage.

Categories: Cell Phone Advertising.

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Latino Movil offers a new text message based service

Latino Movil, a U.S. based mobile content provider, has partnered with Comunicad, a marketing company, and launched a service with the slogan “Your Country, Your News.” The basic idea is to provide people from Latin American countries who live in the U.S. with information and updates from their countries. What it does is, it gives you news updates, sports, politics, and entertainment news from your country via a text message. You can subscribe to it by pressing the pound sign, typing the word Latin, and then pressing Send. You will be directed to an automated voicemail system which will let you choose your language and the country from which you’d like to get news updates and other information from. This service will cost you $5.99 per month and you will get up to three text messages per day.

Latino Movil also has another service called Mobile Machine, which enables you to download video, audio, and photo content from a country of your choice to your mobile phone using Bluetooth technology. This, of course, comes at a fee. Latino Movil is right now available with carrier networks like AT&T/Cingular, Verizon, Sprint Nextel, Alltel, and Dobson.

Categories: All things mobile phones.

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