(snip)
There is a fifth nationwide (or maybe nearly nationwide?) wireless provider in the US, and that is Alltel. A great deal of what is now Verizon Wireless at one time was part of Alltel, but Alltel still does exist.
Voicestream changed into T-Mobile. I understand that there was even a name used prior to being called Voicestream but I can't remember what it was.
As for a good deal of what had been Alltel at one time becoming part of Verizon Wireless around 2000, also remember that when GTE was taking over Contel in the early 1990s, they had to sell off landline services in certain states or portions of states, possibly to comply with various FTC or DOJ anti-trust things.
Citizens Telephone and Alltel were the two companies that GTE sold legacy GTE and legacy Contel landline markets (sometimes entire states) to. But also at the very same time, GTE took over some of Alltel landline territory. It was almost as if GTE and Alltel "traded off" some landline areas.
When Bell Atlantic / NYNEX took over GTE / Contel in 2000 to become Verizon, in addition to the Wireless consolidations that happened first (including some of Alltel wireless becoming Verizon, though not all of what was Alltel wireless was merged into Verizon wireless, there is still a great deal of Alltel that is still on its own), there were legacy GTE (and old legacy Contel) landline areas which Verizon again sold off. This included all of GTE Alaska which was sold to about five small local independent telcos that had always been in Alaska; a good deal of GTE in the Texas, Oklahoma, and New Mexico areas being sold into a new spin-off called Valor; parts of old GTE being sold to various existing smaller independent telcos here and there, as well as part of old GTE or Contel being sold to CenturyTel and again to Citizens and Alltel.
More recently Verizon sold off old GTE Hawaiian Telephone to the Carlyle Group, and Telus in Canada bought back Verizon's shares which date back to when GT&E owned the British Columbia Telephone Company and the Quebec Telephone Company in eastern Quebec. In early 2004, Verizon also announced that it wanted to sell off all legacy New York Tel outside of the New York City Metro Area (LATA 132), but those plans have been cancelled.
But Alltel still has a wireless operation. And more recently, when AT&T-Wireless was being sold to Cingular (owned 60% by SBC now known as AT&T, and 40% by BellSouth and HQ'd in BellSouth's Atlanta), remember how some customers were "turned over" to Alltel wireless!
There are still several smaller regional and local cellular companies in the US. MOST of them do have contracts with the major national providers for roaming purposes, but a lot of them are strictly local or regional providers for those who really don't travel much (i.e., they don't need to roam), and thus might be able to provide cheaper monthly rates!
But as for the major providers, note how all of them are also associated with incumbent landline telcos, except for T-Mobile.
Cinuglar (SBC/AT&T and BellSouth) Verizon Alltel Sprint (now including Nextel)
However, with the Sprint-Nextel merger, they have announced that Sprint is keeping Long Distance and wireless, but are going to sell-off or spin-off their (incumbent) local telephone operations, to some yet to be announced entity and name/logo. The local telco operations is what Sprint claims was "100+ years of service", being the old United Telephone, and also Centel (Central Telephone), the latter being merged into Sprint-United in the early 1990s.
- Anthony Bellanga