Verizon Alltel

Um, do we verizon customers get my circle? And get to hang out at the wizard's house? No really that my circle thing is kinda cool.

Verizon Wireless to buy Alltel in $28.1 bln deal

"This is a way of getting growth from a market that's becoming fully saturated and beginning to slow down," said analyst Joseph Bonner at Argus Research.

"They get the bragging rights," he said, referring to Verizon overtaking AT&T as the largest player in the U.S. mobile services market.
[...]
Verizon Wireless and Alltel have an overlap of about 15 percent of their network coverage, according to Seidenberg. But he said that did not necessarily correspond exactly to the amount of divestitures regulators would require. He said he expected any divestiture requirements to be "manageable."

And in other news 1,000s are facing layoffs.