In an application to the SEC, Shentel stated that its affiliate agreement gives 90 days to negotiate with T-Mobile its continued membership. If no agreement is reached between the two, T-Mobile has 60 days to decide whether to acquire the assets of Shentel`s wireless business for 90% of its total commercial value. Wireless accounts for the majority of Shentel`s business. Shentel`s wireless operating income for the last quarter was close to $43.9 million, well above the $8.7 million in operating revenues from its broadband business or $2.2 million from its De Tower segment. The company said many changes have already navigated in Sprint`s move to T-Mobile collection and branding guidelines. “While the impact on Sprint`s customers in our affiliate business is uncertain at this stage, future integration plans are expected to have a negative impact on the operating and financial results of our mobile segment,” the company said. The problem with T-Mobile is that the two companies have not been able to agree on the valuation of Shentel`s assets. The agreement could have been adjudicating if T-Mo and Shentel had not reached an agreement, but the two companies finally found terms that were consensual for both on November 3. At a profit conference, Shentel executives were asked about similar agreements. They reported on previous acquisitions of Sprint subsidiaries in the mid-2000s. “There were a dozen of them…
between Sprint`s partners and Nextel`s partners, which I consider to be a good compensation for our program,” Volk said. The fact is that, since T-Mobile bought them, T-Mobile has almost no customers in the Shantel regions, so to absorb their customers, they have to buy them. Basically, Shantel is a kind of MVNO with the name Sprint. But if T-Mobile didn`t buy them, I imagine they would have to make a deal for them to continue to exit the T-Mobile network as MVNO, and T-Mobile should try to entice Shantel`s customers to come from Shantel. They buy them, they don`t have to worry about service areas, and they can simply combine them into one company. T-Mobile US wants to buy the wireless operations of Shenandoah Telecommunication and exercises a sprint partnership option from 1999 – but price is a sensitive point in the negotiations. As part of the agreement, Shentel earns revenue for the provision of wireless network services to Sprint. Turnover varies according to Sprint`s subscriber bills within the affiliate area. At the same time, Sprint retains some fees for the support services it provides to Shentel. In 2006, Sprint acquired its subsidiary Alamosa Holdings Inc., which served 1.5 million subscribers in 19 states for approximately $3.4 billion in cash, excluding the acquisition of $900 million in debt.
In 2005, the company acquired several smaller subsidiaries, including US Unwired Inc for $968 million in cash, Gulf Coast Wireless LLC for $211 million in cash and IWO Holdings Inc. for $192 million in cash. Shenandoah Telecommunications, aka Shentel, revealed that it was in negotiations with T-Mobile to continue as a subsidiary of T-Mo after the merger. Shentel has been a subsidiary of Sprint since 1995 and has more than one million wireless customers in states such as West Virginia, West Virginia, Maryland and Pennsylvania. As part of an affiliate agreement, Shentel is Sprint`s only mobile operator in the entire Middle Atlantic region of the United States, covering much of Central and West Virginia, central-western Pennsylvania, West Virginia and parts of Maryland, Kentucky and Ohio. That`s why the announcement of Sprint`s merger by T-Mobile on April 1, 2020 was an important development for Shentel. The company then received a notice from T-Mobile regarding technology conversion, brand conversion and combination (Notice of Conversion) in accordance with the affiliate agreement.