Verizon Rumors

Rumors yesterday and today about Verizon wanting to buy Alltel. Supposedly, Verizon Wireless partner, Vodafone, is spreading these rumors. I don't see a merger of that size getting by anti-trust. But I have been wrong in the past. But these rumors, like the ones where DT was looking to buy Sprint-Nextel, have the scent of someone playing the stock market delta game. Raise a balloon and make some money on the stock delta for the day. But that's just my jaded opinion.

UPDATE: The cse can be made that Alltel and VZW are a good fit. Both are CDMA and have cross-roaming agreements (which explains the Alltel commercial claims of more network everywhere). Alltel went private 18 months ago and since then the credit crunch is probably affecting the new owners, so a sale would be a quick turn around. The private buy out was at $27.5B for the fifth US cellco at 13M customers.