Verizon Completes Acquisition of Rural Cellular

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Verizon Wireless today announced that it has completed its acquisition of Rural Cellular, which offers GSM service under the Unicel brand. Verizon gains 625,000 customers and licenses covering 4.7 million people. Customers and stores will be transitioned to the Verizon Wireless brand and CDMA service market-by-market as network and billing conversions are completed, beginning early in 2009 and continuing through mid-year. GSM networks will remain in place to offer roaming for other GSM carriers' customers. Rural Cellular operations in Vermont, New York, western Kansas, southern Minnesota and parts of Washington are either required to be divested as part of this transaction, or are expected to be divested as a requirement of Verizon's planned acquisition of Alltel. Those markets will continue offering GSM service under the Unicel brand until they can be sold.

Verizon Wireless Completes Purchase Of Rural Cellular (http://news.vzw.com/news/2008/08/pr2008-08-07.html)