The Alltel and Verizon Merger – Pretty Sure I’m Not Going To Like It

In 2008, when it was announced that Verizon wanted to gobble up hot rival Alltel, I fervently hoped the FCC would reject it. Because of the timing, what with it being under the watch of the lesser Bush, I knew it was likely that it would be approved. With the announcement this week that approval had been granted, I find myself shaded by a cloud of dread.

Alltel was the one major carrier that offered me a fair price, fair terms, good coverage, and suited my wireless habits. In previous blogs I’ve written about my phone use. A handful of calls a month (if that) that are generally just for a couple of minutes, and a couple of text messages most days of a month. Because of my light habits, my average cell charges are about $10-15 a month.

Alltel has been a godsend. With the pre-paid plan I chose, I pay $0.15 for voice minutes and $0.10 for in/out text messaging. What’s really great is that so long as I use my phone for 1 (yes, ONE) minute a month, I don’t have to pay any extra fees and my account stays live. No required monthly replenishments that I wouldn’t come close to using. Given the low amount I pay each month on average, clearly I’ve been very well-served by Alltel. No wonder they’d been stealing away costomers from the other greedy bastards cell networks.

Needless to say, I’m very concerned about what’s going to happen once Verizon (a/k/a “evil-V”) has completed devouring its competitor. Their best pre-paid plan (and the one I easily rejected when I went with Alltel)? $0.99 on each day I use the phone. While there is unlimited “IN” calling mobile to mobile (presumably only to other evil-V customers), the per-minute rates for other calls and text rates are at $0.10. It’s the access fee that’s the killer. That alone is going to cost $20-30 a month on top of which I’ll still be paying for those texts — which are the bulk of my wireless communication. Basically, what that plan does is tack on a dollar for every day that I want to use my phone. Blech.

So, even if I opted to pay that extra money, evil-V tosses in another idiotic hoop for me to jump through: refill expiration dates (* $15-$29.99 expires in 30 days; * $30-$74.99 expires in 60 days*; $75-$99.99 expires in 90 days; $100 or more expires in 1 year). Now, this isn’t unfamiliar to me. When I was with AT&T, they had a 90-day expiration. I didn’t like it, but their minimum fees weren’t onerous.

When you add everything up, if Verizon doesn’t change its pre-paid plan scheme, I’ll have to at least double what I’m paying for my minimal phone service. Again…Blech!

Actually, it will be more as I got my mom her own Alltel account. She uses the phone even less than I do…making maybe one call every couple of months. We’re talking her phone’s hit to the budget coming in at less than $1 per month. It’s sort of insane to pay the sort of fees evil-V is demanding for that sort of use. That means that mom will likely be without her emergency lifeline solely due to economic realities.

Being that I’d want my mom to still have that ability to contact me when she’s out of the house, you’d think that the likeliest course would be to get a family plan. Yeah, you’d think that. Verizon’s lowest cost family plan (2-lines) starts at $69.99 and has $0.20 per in/out text. Seriously?

Now, my brother has been a contract slave signed up with Verizon for quite a while. I’m going to have to crunch some numbers to see if it would make sense to family-plan things sort of piggy-backed to what he’s been paying. Somehow, I’m not thinking so.

It doesn’t really leave me with a lot of options. We have some local cell providers that might suit my mom’s needs, but I have a preference for being able to stay in touch throughout much of my large and very rural state. (Again, a strength of Alltel.) This means I need to be with a major provider. My experience with AT&T will keep me away from them (poor coverage – in the CITY(!) – and service at the time I left them), Sprint’s rep in town sucks…and that’s without the fact that they likely will not survive the economic downturn. And that leaves Verizon.

I will give the evil-V its props on one thing: it probably has the best overall “can you hear me now” coverage in the area. Is it worth increasing my telecommunications tithe 100-300%? I’m thinking no.

Again, I’m going to have to be a pure pie-in-the-sky optimist and hope that Verizon adopts Alltel’s pre-paid pricing. It’s really the sanest pricing in the business as it allows for people like me who don’t use the phone much, but when they are away and need one, they need one from a reliable company.

Then, let’s add on top of this my general antipathy of Verizon buy Alltel in the first place. Alltel was a healthy and growing company that understood its customer base. Verizon bought them solely to stomp them out. It wasn’t to get into the rural areas that Alltel frequented. None of the cell providers likes having to put up towers in the wastelands of the western states. No, it was because Chad was all too effective. You know those commercials where Alltel makes the other four major carriers look like petulant and greedy dolts? Well…sometimes the truth hurts.