AT&T bought regional carrier Centennial Communications Corp last week for $944 million. The purchase was made to improve AT&T’s coverage in the Midwest, Southeast, and Puerto Rico. By purchasing an existing infrastructure and subscriber base, carriers like AT&T can maintain subscriber growth in the current economic climate for far less than the cost of doing it themselves.
AT&T has indicated that Centennial subscribers will see no ill effects in the carrier swap, but will eventually have to transfer to AT&T’s billing system.
|via MobileCrunch|
Considering the current state of the global economy, expect more news of this sad nature in the coming weeks. Carrier Vodafone is expected this week to announce a substantial job cut of its European workforce aimed at generating savings of £1 billion (US$1.6 billion). This news comes in addition to previous warnings from Vodafone that their sales have remained difficult in its UK and Spanish markets. Vodafone is expected Tuesday to post a half-year operating profit of £5.7 billion on sales of £19.8 billion.
