Verizon swap plan still on hold

By KIM SMITH DEDAM
Staff Writer

January 05, 2008 06:35 am

— LAKE PLACID — A plan for Verizon to buy Unicel property in New York and swap it with AT&T is still awaiting approval.
Verizon put plans in the works last July to purchase Rural Cellular Corp., including Unicel brand, in a $2.67 billion deal.
The merger was approved by Rural Cellular shareholders in October.
But the rural New York Unicel properties, including sites in the Adirondacks, will be swapped with AT&T.
Rural Cellular operates with a different type of technology, known as GSM, and Verizon’s planned merger drew fire in November from Vermont lawmakers who saw the deal as potentially creating a monopoly in the Northeast cell-phone market.
In December, Verizon and AT&T agreed on an “asset swap,” an exchange of property between the two telecommunications companies.
In the swap, Verizon would trade former Rural Cellular properties, “including licenses, network assets and subscribers, in the Burlington, Vt., metropolitan service area and in rural service areas in New York, Vermont and Washington,” an AT&T release states.
Verizon would acquire AT&T properties that were once part of Dobson Communications in Kentucky.
The transactions were signed Dec. 3, 2007, but are contingent upon regulatory approval expected to close by mid 2008.
Verizon spokesman John O’Malley would not say Friday whether Unicel towers already located inside the Adirondack Park would transfer to AT&T or anything further about the pending deal.
“We’re moving forward on it. Until it is closer to happening, there is not much to say about it.”
Unicel had previously leased space to build a tower at the transfer station in North Hudson and was working on a deal to place a tower in the hamlet of Elizabethtown.
It also has towers sited in Lake Placid and Saranac Lake, supplying full cell-phone service to the central Tri-Lakes area.

E-mail Kim Smith Dedam at: kdedam@pressrepublican.com