Company Overview

Alltel was created in 1983 with the merger of Allied Telephone and Mid Continent Telephone companies. The company has been involved in the wireless industry for 21 years, providing wireless service (including PCS and paging services) to 11 million customers across most of the United States. The company also offers long-distance service, local phone service, product distribution, directory publishing, information processing services (Alltel staffs, equips, and operates information processing centers for companies in the financial services and telecom industries), and business software for telecom and financial services clients. In 2003, Alltel launched a new national pay-as-you-go wireless service, available at 1,500 Wal-Mart locations. In that year, the company also unloaded the Financial Services division of its Alltel Information Services subsidiary to Fidelity National Financial, in a deal worth $1.05 billion. Alltel’s 2005 pickup of Western Wireless garnered 1.4 million new wireless subscribers and expanded the company’s reach into nine Western states. The cash-stock-and-debt deal was valued at $6.5 billion. Alltel continued to grow with purchases of Midwest Wireless, First Cellular and Valor Communications in 2005 and ’06.