Cingular wins AT&T Wireless bid at $40.7 billion

Cingular Wireless was the first company to make a formal bid on AT&T Wireless, and has sucessfully completed the purchase today for $40.7 billion USD.

Verizon Wireless has now been pushed back to the no. 2 wireless carrier (this means alot of changed advertisements). Vodafone Group withdrew from the deal after a two-way bidding war started between them and Cingular. They will now be ranked at 46 million subscribers, Verizon last month reported 37.5 million subscribers in their quarterly earnings report.

Any layoffs would be in addition to the 1,900 jobs AT&T Wireless previously announced.

AT&T Wireless’ share price has risen steadily in the last few weeks of their first offering. The carrier has over 22 million subscribers including a large base of corporate clients who use more services and spend more money then the average residential subscriber.

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