FCC Delays AT&T-Alltel Review

On day 175 of a 180-day review, the Federal Communications Commission halted its review of a sale of domestic assets from Atlantic Tele-Network to AT&T.

The $780 million transaction announced in January involves the domestic retail wireless business operated under the Alltel name. ATN’s subsidiary, Allied Wireless Communications Corp., is located in Little Rock and is managed by former Alltel executives.

Allied serves approximately 585,000 customers in rural areas of six states — Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Illinois, Ohio and Idaho – and has been operating properties in those areas in the aftermath of the $28 billion Alltel-Verizon deal in 2009.

The FCC contends that it has not received information it wants related to pre-paid customers as part of the deal.

“We appreciate your efforts to respond to the Information and Discovery Requests sent to you on June 5, 2013, which, among other things, requested AT&T’s plans for migrating all of ATN’s customers following the proposed transaction. In response, we have received information on AT&T’s plans for ATN’s post-paid customers,” Ruth Milkman, Chief of the FCC’s Wireless Telecommunications Bureau, said in a letter to AT&T and Allied representatives.

“As of the date of this letter, however, despite several Commission staff follow-up conversations about the importance of transitioning pre-paid customers, we have received no detailed responses from AT&T on its plans for transitioning ATN’s significant pre-paid customer base,” she said in announcing a delay of the review.

In a statement posted at Wireless Week, Jim Cicconi, AT&T senior executive vice president of external & legislative affairs, said, “AT&T is extremely disappointed at the FCC delay today on this small transaction. AT&T is ready, willing and able to make significant network investments in these rural territories to bring HSPA+ and LTE services to Allied’s customers, an investment that will not occur but for this transaction. AT&T has actively worked to address FCC concerns and will continue to work with the Commission until all issues are resolved.”