U.S. Cellular Being Pressured by Investors to Sell
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Comments 26
Mar 13, 2009, 7:53 AM by Eric M. Zeman
U.S. Cellular's majority owner, Telephone & Data Systems (TDS), is facing shareholder pressure to sell the nation's fifth-largest wireless network to a larger telecom provider. TDS owns 81% of U.S. Cellular and could soon face a proxy battle by shareholders who want a clear strategy from TDS on its future. Some of the disgruntled shareholders include Gamco Investors and Southeastern Asset Management, which combined own about 30% of TDS. U.S. Cellular has said it will deploy LTE, which is the next-generation technology being adopted by AT&T, Verizon and others, making it a compatible acquisition target in the future. U.S. Cellular has about 6 million customers. None of the companies involved officially commented on any plans.
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Very Disturbing
I wonder who these investors think would be interested in purchasing U.S. Cellular at this time? Verizon is out...the feds would never allow them to keep all of the assets. AT&T and T-Mobile but they would have to convert the CDMA to GSM unless they wait four or five years for U.S. Cellular to convert to LTE first. But these guys making a power play is akin to a football player demanding a trade. Now the buyers know that a deal must be done and they will low ball the company thinking they have the upper hand. If only a third party walked in and purchased U.S. Cellular, Sprint (CDMA) and divested Alltel kept the U.S. Cellular or Alltel name (Sprint's is MUD at this point) then maybe it would make sense. Highly unlikely though. I quest...
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This is very interesting. I suspect that the stock holders have come to a conclusion that they can no longer compete and want out of the market.
Alltel and USC pretty much had the same phones, and now that Alltel is gone, the price of their equipm...
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I think that a third party would be the only strategy available at this current stage too. Although unlikely it is a possibility. It would have to be a large enough company with financial backing. (Comcast, Time Warner, Clearwire,or independent fina...
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I don't like where this is going. I know mergers and acquisitions happen, but the Alltel merger with Verizon left a bad taste in my mouth. I keep wondering how far this will go with the larger providers eating up the smaller ones. There has to be comp...
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This would be the PERFECT time for US Cellular to grow! If it picked up most of the VZW/Alltel divestures, it could be a significantly large carrier. It is relatively immune from being bought out right now: Sprint doesn't have the capital, Verizon has...
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Okay, first of all... there is no way that Sprint has the resources to purchase U.S. Cellular... they're pretty much bankrupt... and with Sprint aquiring Nextel a few years back put a huge monkey wrench in their network... hence why they report contin...
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No!!!
This is a good company, plus they're huge in Chicago, it pains me to think that verizon will probably want to get their greedy hands on this network too. Sprint is too broke to buy anything so we don't have to worry about them but if uscc sells i know a lot of people that would switch to another provider just so they dont have verizon.
I work for a VZW retailer in South Dakota. In SD and ND, the two main carriers are VZW and Alltel, and in NE, it's Alltel and USC. So VZW will acquire the Alltel towers in NE, but will have to divest ND and SD. USC would be a perfect candidate: expand...
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Sprint Needs to move
I hope that sprint moves on this, this would help them out... they need to find the money and buy Us Cellular.
lol r u kidding?? they aren't even the ones investing in the WiMax network, but cable companies...
Sprint doesn't have the money to buy out US Cellular; they have billions in debt since they bought out Nextel, and continues to lose money today.
If any of the major carriers were to buy out U.S. Cellular, it would probably either be AT&T or T-Mobi...
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