AT&T today announced that it has closed its proposed acquisition of Leap Wireless. The transaction was just approved by the Federal Communications Commission, though AT&T and Leap’s boards had already approved the deal months ago.
According to AT&T, Cricket will be integrated with AT&T’s existing operations over the coming weeks to create “the new Cricket.” AT&T is promising to shake up the no-contract market with low-cost plans, strong devices, and an expanded network. The new Cricket will take advantage of AT&T’s LTE 4G network rather than Cricket’s CDMA network. AT&T expects Cricket’s 4.6 million customers to fully migrate to its devices and network within 18 months. In addition to acquiring Cricket’s customers, AT&T landed PCS and AWS spectrum licenses that it calls “largely complementary” to its existing holdings.
Some of the Cricket spectrum covers approximately 41 million people and is completely unused. AT&T will begin using this spectrum for LTE as soon as possible to provide additional capacity to its 4G network.
AT&T said the deal’s closing will impact its first-quarter financials. It will detail how much when it reports first-quarter earnings in April.
