Verizon buying Alltel, Do you think this is good for customers?

Well, here we go again with telecom mergers. Reports that Verizon and Alltel were in talks of a buy out to the tune of $27 million surfaced yesterday, and they made it official today, only that it is more like $28.1 million and they hope to have the transaction completed by the end of the year. Of course this is all subject to approval by regulatory committees and such, so we can all wait anxiously to see if it happens or not.

This is probably a good move for both companies and its stock holders. Verizon and Alltel are already using the same network technology and both have committed to LTE as their 4g networks. With this combination, Verizon will surpass AT&T as the largest subscriber base for a Cell Phone company, not to mention their already enormous network. Looking at it from a business standpoint the synergies of the combined company will be vast, and the profits should greatly increase making stock holders happy. However, this will increase the power that Verizon has, and allow them to play by their rules even more that they already do.

I personally think this is bad for us as consumers (if you could not tell that by my writing above.) Verizon already has a lot of power, and if this is approved it will be just one less compettitor to try and keep then from honest. Add in the fact that the boys at AT&T probably will not take kindly to number 2, and the former rumors of Deutsche Telekom looking into a Sprint acquisition, and we could be in for problems that will further put our networks behind the networks in Europe.