T-Mobile Announces Acquisition of UScellular – Deal Will Close in 2025

Confirming rumors that have swirled for the past several months, T-Mobile announced yesterday that it has entered into an agreement to acquire the customers and most of the assets of the nations largest regional carrier, UScellular.

Assuming regulators approve - the deal is slated to close in mid-2025.

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Overview of the Acquisition

UScellular is the nations largest regional cellular provider.

UScellular's prime market concentration has been in the Pacific Northwest, Midwest, New England, and Mid-Atlantic regions - and in many of these areas UScellular is locally dominant with unrivaled cellular coverage, particularly in rural areas.

But UScellular has never been of much interest for our nomadic audience. To sign up for service, you must live in one of their service areas - and even though you can get coverage in other areas via roaming agreements with other carriers (currently AT&T) - the majority of your usage needs to remain in UScellular native territory.

UScellular currently offer smartphone plans (both postpaid and prepaid), data device plans, and home internet plans. 

As part of the proposed deal, T-Mobile will be acquiring all of UScellulars customers and stores. But T-Mobile will only be acquiring about 30% of UScellular's spectrum rights, meaning UScellular's corporate parents will hold onto the remaining 70% of spectrum and towers - and will be entering into a long-term lease to let T-Mobile use and manage these assets.

Once this deal closes, UScellular customers will have the option (at least in the short term) to stay on their existing UScellular plans, or to move to a T-Mobile plan.

We don't have much information yet on what exactly the specific options and incentives will be, but T-Mobile has stated that customers who do choose to switch to T-Mobile will incur no switching costs.

What Does This Mean?

This merger may be good news for existing UScellular customers, as their plans will soon have access to unlimited roaming on T-Mobile's nationwide network. 

This acquisition may be good news for some T-Mobile customers as well, because it will increase their coverage in some rural areas where UScellular was previously the dominant carrier.

But this merger is not good for competition overall in the US cellular market. UScellular is the last of the big regional providers, so the merger would mean that the three big national providers - AT&T, Verizon, and T-Mobile - will be left holding all the cards.

Of course there are still many hurdles to go through before this deal actually goes through - and there's always the chance that it won't be approved by regulators.

T-Mobile has done a lot of growth by acquisition the past few years - merging with Sprint in 2020 and Mint Mobile earlier this year.

But they still will need to go through a long regulatory process before this deal can be solidified.

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