Thanks to davegrrr for notifying me about this recent press release about the purchase. It seems to make sense to me particularly since they both share the same technology (CDMA) and same towers (lots of mutual agreements in the past).

After I saw this I remembered how long I've had a cell phone. I think I got my first cell phone in 1994 with the old bag phone that mainly ran off the car and would only last about 8 hours off the battery pack. Back then they were called Sprint Cellular. I also remember the small notebook that contained roaming rates depending on where you traveled to and how you actually had to activate roaming in an area to receive and place phone calls.

After several years Sprint Cellular became 360° Communications. Then it eventually became Alltel. I was with Alltel/360°/Sprint Cellular until 2005 when I got tired of their plans and equipment and jumped over to Verizon Wireless. Funny how they have sort of followed me along to Verizon Wireless now after all that.