Tuesday, September 17, 2013

AT&T Hopes to Put Element Out of Its Misery

AT&T has agreed to take control of Element Mobile.  Credit goes to Fierce Wireless who reports that Element will become Lake Mobility which will be mostly owned by AT&T.  This means yet another exchange of handsets for customers in the central Wisconsin area but this time the switchover should be much more friendly.

Element Mobile was created by the owners of the spectrum in this Wisconsin area who refused to sell their license to Verizon as part of its acquisition of Alltel Wireless.  The conversion was a nightmare for former Alltel customers and our Ratings for the network has been among the lowest of all wireless carriers in the US based on how badly they treated their old Alltel customers.

In the meantime, both AT&T and Verizon Wireless have been encroaching into the Element area and their days seemed to be numbered.  This should mean better days for Wisconsin wireless customers and enables us to say this is one small carrier that will be better put to sleep.

2 comments:

Benjamin from CA said...

This could also spell the end for airfire mobile which IMO has only survived through the roaming revenue they pull in. With AT&T taking over Element which fills in their biggest coverage gap in the state and T-Mobile finally building out along major highways this could spell the end.

Oz Andrews said...

Yes, Airfire dodged a bullet last time they declared bankruptcy and would have done well to accept the offer to be acquired by US Cellular. Small, stand alone wireless carriers have little hope. Fortunately, Wisconsin has some other small players they could combine with, but Airfire brings little to the table. There is nobody to answer any of our questions at Airfire.