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Jan. 6, 2009

Verizon Wireless has said in an SEC 8-K filing on Dec. 31 that it will close its acquisition of Alltel on Jan.9.

The merger will make Verizon Wireless the largest U.S. mobile carrier, passing AT&T by a few million subscribers.

The Basking Ridge, N.J. company and AT&T are pulling away from Sprint Nextel, which continues to lose subscribers in recent quarters.

Verizon announced its plan to buy Alltel on June 4, 2008, followed by approval from the Department of Justice in October, the FCC in November and the FTC in December 2008.

Now Verizon officials are planning for closure by the end of January or early February at the latest.

With FCC and various other regulatory details behind them, now Verizon/Alltel can move forward with integrating wireless networks, eliminating redundancies, merging customer service units and developing new mobile service plans.

Last year, Alltel attempted to acquire Sprint Nextel but wasn’t able to fund its planned acquisition simply because of 2008’s global financial meltdown and the resulting credit crunch.

For 2009, other challenges for Verizon include the ongoing development for its LTE plan, finding ways to boost data revenue without radically altering its text fee structure and expanding its services to allow third-party network devices.

In other news, Verizon today said its customers sent a little over 1.59 billion text messages on Dec. 31 and more than 1.68 billion on Christmas Day.

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Source: Verizon Wireless.