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Verizon completes Tracfone acquisition after FCC approval:
Verizon on Tuesday said it had completed its acquisition of prepaid mobile company Tracfone, just a day after the US Federal Communications Commission voted to approve the $6 billion deal. Verizon announced the acquisition in September, pending the regulatory approval that finally came this week.
[...] When the deal was announced, Verizon's CEO Hans Vestberg tweeted that the company was excited to "put the full support of Verizon behind this business." It's another big investment from the wireless carrier, following Verizon's spending $53 billion on radio airwaves this March.
[...] The FCC's approval came with a long list of "binding conditions to address potential harms and to ensure the transaction will be in the public interest," according to an FCC press release. Those conditions are largely centered on keeping Tracfone's products and services accessible and affordable for low-income consumers and ensuring Tracfone's existing customers don't get left behind in the transition.
(Score: 2) by Joe Desertrat on Thursday November 25 2021, @01:21AM (1 child)
I've used Tracfone since 2016 and I've been satisfied with it. Mind you, I use it primarily as a phone, I do my "computing" with a PC. I'm leery of Verizon taking over, but on the other hand, I've developed a deep personal grudge against AT&T for the way they treated me with DSL. Was an AT&T DSL customer since 2004, a dial-up customer before that. This past July I had another major outage, the third one this year. This time they jerked me around for almost a month, with constant promises it would be up the next day. Sometimes it was, but within a few hours it would go down again. Finally I called Spectrum (that's how desperate I was!) and they hooked me up the next day with much faster internet (oh yeah, I never got close to promised speed with AT&T) and no service interruptions since then. When I called AT&T to cancel, I expected the usual spiel in an attempt to retain my business, but instead they immediately canceled me with the warning that I would never be able to get DSL again. It struck me then that they were never going to repair my service, they had hoped to string me along until they had their 5G or whatever set up in my neighborhood and then try to force me to use that. They still have utility crews working constantly in the area, so I would probably still be waiting.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 25 2021, @01:47AM
I could see it going either way, but I don't think Verizon wants to change much, at least at first. This is their only real way of expanding their user base when almost everyone already has a cell phone provider.