Alltel to participate in spectrum auction

It seems that TPG Capital and GS Capital Partners, the companies that bought Alltel earlier this year, have some brains behind their piles of money. Instead of going in and messing with what was working, the newly-annoited bosses of the company (though the deal still won’t close for two weeks, give or take) are maintaining the status quo. Management will almost all stay in place, though with a bit of role reassigning. Oh yeah, and they’ll be bidders in the 700 MHz spectrum auction.

“We currently intend to participate in Auction 73; however, there can be no assurance that we will obtain any licenses in Auction 73,” the Alltel filing states.

Damn. Now they’re calling it Auction 73? That’s so much easier to type than 700 MHz spectrum auction. Maybe we’ll try to slip it in casually, so you won’t notice the transition.

Alltel disclosed that it has $750 million available to purchase or acquire licenses and rights in the auction. The company also will have approximately $1.5 billion of borrowing capacity available after going private, it said.

The $750 million would indicate that Alltel would go for one of the smaller licenses. The $1.5 billion mention, though, is basically saying, “yeah, we have $750 million, but we can go higher and compete with the big boys if we need to.” We’d like to see that, because maybe it would mean getting Alltel in the Northeast.

In poor Alltel news, they seemingly had a problem with daylight savings time ending. Guess it can’t all be good.

[Arkansas News Bureau]

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