Alltel: We will deploy LTE: Technology still three to five years out

Alltel Corp. has committed to LTE as its technological choice for a 4G network, but any significant network upgrades are still three to five years out, the company said on a conference call with investors after releasing financial results from the previous quarter.
“We do currently plan to move towards LTE in the three-to-five year timeframe versus WiMAX, but we’re still early in that,” President and CEO Scott Ford said.
“We are working through our planning phase and will be talking to our board about all that over the next two quarters,” Chief Operating Officer Jeff Fox added. “Certainly there’s no money for 4G evolution anytime in our near-term plans, and so I think from a cash-flow perspective you should not expect to see us talking about 4G anytime at least in 2008.”
AT&T Mobility and Verizon Wireless earlier this year committed to the technology for their 4G plans, and will deploy the spectrum across their recently acquired 700 MHz spectrum. Those carriers’ deployment timelines somewhat mirror Alltel’s.
Further, Alltel is the second major CDMA carrier (after Verizon Wireless) to switch tracks and select LTE – which stands on the GSM evolution path – as its 4G choice. Thus, the future of UMB, the 4G upgrade for CDMA, remains that much cloudier.
Clearwire Corp., which recently benefited from a seven-party deal to form a much larger Clearwire that would include Sprint Nextel Corp.’s WiMAX business, stands alone as the only major carrier to select WiMAX as its network technology of choice.
Despite being taken private in a $27.5 billion acquisition by equity firms last November, Alltel Corp. recorded nearly $125 million in losses during the past quarter, its first full period off the New York Stock Exchange. The company, which blamed the losses on costs associated with the deal, profited $230 million in the same period a year prior.
The No. 5 carrier’s net subscriber adds surged, however, with nearly 380,000 new customers coming into the fold in the quarter, up 63% year-over-year. Alltel’s total subscriber base climbed 9% to just over 13 million customers at the quarter’s close. Subscriber growth was in some cases double what analysts predicted for the quarter.
Average revenue per user (ARPU) jumped 2% from $52.49 to $53.64 while customer churn was also up from 1.77% to 1.83% year-over-year. Data ARPU climbed 60% from the year prior to $7.50. Revenues were up 11% overall to $2.3 billion.