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Dec. 12, 2008

Verizon Wireless says it now has all the necessary government approvals to acquire Alltel.

As a result, the wireless provider is now looking ahead to start its long-planned LTE rollout in October 2009.

Verizon Wireless is currently the nation’s second-largest mobile carrier after AT&T.

The company announced its intention to acquire Alltel in June of 2008, transforming itself into the top wireless carrier by number of overall net subscriptions.

DOJ approval for its Alltel acquisition came six weeks ago, followed by FCC approval last month. The FTC also added its own stamp today, approving early termination of the merger. The announcement was only a formality, as Verizon already agreed to divest itself in overlapping markets.

While Verizon-Alltel can move forward with plans to integrate the dual networks and management systems, company officials are also beginning to discuss a next-generation LTE (Long Term Evolution) network.

Long Term Evolution is the name given to a project within the Third Generation Partnership Project to improve the UMTS mobile phone standard to cope with future technology evolutions. Goals include improving spectral efficiency, lowering costs, improving services, making use of new spectrum and refarmed spectrum opportunities, and overall better integration with other open standards.

The insight about LTE likely to begin within 12 months came from Dick Lynch, CTO and executive vice president of Verizon Communications, in a speech at a Cisco Systems conference Tuesday.

Verizon Communications owns 55 percent of Verizon Wireless, with Vodafone controlling the remaining 45 percent.

Most industry experts agree that commercial rollouts of LTE will not be readily available until 2010 at the soonest. Others predict a technological merger between LTE and Wi-MAX technology. Other industry experts disagree, saying that the speed at which technology is advancing today makes predicting anything almost impossible.

Verizon Wireless previously explained its intentions to build and roll out LTE technology using its recently acquired 700 MHz spectrum from the FCC.

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    This article was featured on Business 5.0 and on Tech Blog.

Source: Verizon Wireless.