Sprint Focusing On Alltel Next?

By Scott Sowle

This week Sprint and Alltel announced a 10 year roaming deal. The new deal will become effective in July and will include mobile service and Internet service. This will benifit Sprint in the wireless broadband race with Verizon. Many had thought that Verizon would be the most likely to acquire Alltel but with this new agreement Sprint may have the upper hand. Sprint is still finishing up their recent purchase of Nextel so I don't look for a bidding war to start until 2007.