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By CHRISTY LATTIN
LVN Community News Editor
CC Communications will remain a cellular provider in Churchill County, but the county-owned phone company plans to sell its wireless assets to a larger company for $8 million and purchase wholesale wireless minutes to provide to its customers.
At Thursday’s meeting with Churchill County Commissioners and CC Communications management, it was decided a letter of intent to sell wireless assets from its enterprise fund, CC Cellular, and enter into a wholesale and service agreement will be sent to an interested regional carrier. The name of the carrier is being withheld pending further negotiations.
Bob Adams, general manager of CC Communications, said the wireless communication business has changed in the last year, and the local company will see a loss in revenue due to the Verizon-Alltell merger that was approved by the Federal Communications Commission on Tuesday.
Currently, Verizon pays CC Communications a substantial amount of money for wireless roaming in the county. Adams said 55 percent of CC Cellular’s revenues come from roaming payments from Verizon. However, with the merger Verizon will be able to use the local Alltell wireless network for roaming and will not need local wireless assets. Adams said CC Cellular stands to go from a net of $3 million per year to losing $2 million per year due to the Verizon merger.
“We’ve been living on borrowed time,” Adams said. “Roaming has been our life blood.”
Compounding that problem is the shrinking demand for land lines, another mainstay of CC Communications. Adams said he’s seen the number of land lines drop from about 14,000 in 2002 to 11,900 — a loss of about 2 percent per year.
Another obstacle the phone company faced was being able to provide next generation cell phone technology to its customers. Adams said it would cost $2.6 million to equip 10 wireless sites in the county with newer technology for data services and text messaging. That’s a big pill to swallow for a wireless customer base of 8,000.
CC Communications, however, has no intention of exiting the cellular business.
“We’re not selling our wireless business,” said Mark Feest, CC Communications’ general counsel and external affairs manager. “We’re just changing the way we do business.”
Feest said local customers will still be able to bundle their communication services with CC Communications. The local phone company offers local and long distance phone service, cellular service, Internet access and the OnNow! television service.
The unnamed regional carrier will purchase all of CC Communications’ wireless assets and will sell the local phone company minutes which can then be packaged and sold to CC Cellular customers. Adams said customers will be able to see better rates for text messaging and will have next generation technology available to them — like watching videos on phones. Customers will also have newer phones from which to choose, whereas now, the phone company can only offer phones that use year-old technology.
Adams said he is hoping to complete the deal within a month.
LVN Community News Editor
CC Communications will remain a cellular provider in Churchill County, but the county-owned phone company plans to sell its wireless assets to a larger company for $8 million and purchase wholesale wireless minutes to provide to its customers.
At Thursday’s meeting with Churchill County Commissioners and CC Communications management, it was decided a letter of intent to sell wireless assets from its enterprise fund, CC Cellular, and enter into a wholesale and service agreement will be sent to an interested regional carrier. The name of the carrier is being withheld pending further negotiations.
Bob Adams, general manager of CC Communications, said the wireless communication business has changed in the last year, and the local company will see a loss in revenue due to the Verizon-Alltell merger that was approved by the Federal Communications Commission on Tuesday.
Currently, Verizon pays CC Communications a substantial amount of money for wireless roaming in the county. Adams said 55 percent of CC Cellular’s revenues come from roaming payments from Verizon. However, with the merger Verizon will be able to use the local Alltell wireless network for roaming and will not need local wireless assets. Adams said CC Cellular stands to go from a net of $3 million per year to losing $2 million per year due to the Verizon merger.
“We’ve been living on borrowed time,” Adams said. “Roaming has been our life blood.”
Compounding that problem is the shrinking demand for land lines, another mainstay of CC Communications. Adams said he’s seen the number of land lines drop from about 14,000 in 2002 to 11,900 — a loss of about 2 percent per year.
Another obstacle the phone company faced was being able to provide next generation cell phone technology to its customers. Adams said it would cost $2.6 million to equip 10 wireless sites in the county with newer technology for data services and text messaging. That’s a big pill to swallow for a wireless customer base of 8,000.
CC Communications, however, has no intention of exiting the cellular business.
“We’re not selling our wireless business,” said Mark Feest, CC Communications’ general counsel and external affairs manager. “We’re just changing the way we do business.”
Feest said local customers will still be able to bundle their communication services with CC Communications. The local phone company offers local and long distance phone service, cellular service, Internet access and the OnNow! television service.
The unnamed regional carrier will purchase all of CC Communications’ wireless assets and will sell the local phone company minutes which can then be packaged and sold to CC Cellular customers. Adams said customers will be able to see better rates for text messaging and will have next generation technology available to them — like watching videos on phones. Customers will also have newer phones from which to choose, whereas now, the phone company can only offer phones that use year-old technology.
Adams said he is hoping to complete the deal within a month.
