Alltel to Forgo Some Wireless Customers

Some 50,000 to 70,000 Cellular One wireless customers in Nebraska won’t migrate to Alltel Communications as most Cellular One users are expected to do later this summer.

Alltel said Wednesday that it had agreed with the Department of Justice not to take over those customers, as well as others in Kansas and Arkansas, as a condition for buying Cellular One’s parent company, Western Wireless Corp. of Bellevue, Wash.

In effect, that would leave Alltel with essentially the same customers it now has in Nebraska, more than 500,000. Alltel would be able to take over Cellular One customers in Lincoln.

To be completed, the acquisition still needs the approval of the Federal Communications Commission and Western Wireless stockholders, who will vote on it July 29.

The $6 billion cash-and-stock acquisition would add nine states to the Alltel wireless market and expand the Little Rock, Ark., company’s operations in several others.

Alltel would have about 10 million wireless customers in 33 states, gaining 1.3 million. It also would pick up 1.6 million customers in six other countries: Ireland, Bolivia, Slovenia, Austria, Haiti and Georgia.

Alltel would forgo taking over an estimated 100,000 to 140,000 Cellular One customers in Nebraska, Kansas and Arkansas.

If the deal moves ahead, a trustee would be named to run the Cellular One operations in those three states until Alltel could sell them to other wireless companies. Alltel would give up the customers, stores, cell towers, employees and licenses involved.

Alltel can keep the spectrum — the broadcast highway — it is obtaining in the Western Wireless acquisition and use it to expand its service.

Alltel has about 300,000 wireline customers in Nebraska, most of them in Lincoln and the southeast quarter of the state.