Alltel lurches toward its acquisition by Verizon

The United States' fifth largest wireless carrier, with the largest network by area looks to be simply holding on until Verizon takes over, leaving open questions as to where its new customers will go.

Alltel has not gone into great detail about how the acquisition will affect its customers, since the June 5 announcement, and fielded no analyst questions in this morning's second quarter earnings call.

Perhaps it was just bad news that Alltel was trying to gloss over. For the second quarter of 2008, the company posted a net loss of just under $70 million despite a 10% growth in revenue (to $2.39 billion) and a net addition of 319,687 new customers.

Churn also rose to nearly 2% for the company, in the wake of the carrier nearly completing its shutdown of analog wireless services and reseller disconnects.

In Verizon's second quarter earnings call, Chief Financial Officer Doreen Toben said, "The Alltel approval process is well under way, and we remain optimistic that it will close by year end." Alltel's Senior Vice President of Corporate Governance Holly Larkin shared that optimism this morning, that the deal would close by the end of the year, but added the caveat, "pending regulatory approval."

In its earnings statement today, Alltel chose instead to highlight the one million gross subscriber additions it saw during the quarter. BetaNews contacted Alltel with inquiries about will happen to these new additions once the acquisition takes place, but as with the earnings call this morning, the company doesn't yet appear ready to divulge the specifics of the transition.