macnn/electronista
12/04/2007, 3:50pm, EST
Tuesday, December 4thAT&T swallows Edge Wireless
AT&T has announced the full acquisition of Edge Wireless, a carrier operating mainly in the Pacific northwest, with extended coverage in Idaho and Wyoming. Though AT&T already had a minority ownership in Edge, it has decided to buy the remaining 64.3 percent, giving it access to an existing subscriber base of approximately 172,000. If approved by the government the purchase will also let AT&T absorb Edge's GSM network, and open up new markets for handsets such as the iPhone.
Edge is at least the second major purchase in 2007 by the former monopoly, which on the same date as the iPhone's launch, also announced the acquisition of Dobson Communications for $2.8 billion. This gave it control of the Cellular One brand, and expanded its possible subscriber base by over 1.7 million.
Filed under: iPhone, industry, gadgets
Other story tags: AT&T, cellphones, Edge Wireless
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Does this mean that the monopoly mentioned is AT&T? I thought they are now a bigger monopoly than they were before AT&T spit a number of years ago?
As for AT&T being a monopoly, not hardly. Kudos to elroth for actually knowing something about recent history before jumping on the bandwagon. In all actuality, this so-called monster has one of the best networks out there in the midwest and is doing better all the time.
Yes, we're all frustrated that we're stuck in contracts w/ other carriers that don't allow the iPhone, but Apple had to start somewhere, and this gorilla gave them the hardware, network, and cooperation to make an amazing first go-around. I'm still waiting to see how well the second gen. phone will turn out.