Alltel personnel safe, but what about their rates and service?

We’ll admit it: we’re taking a speculative route here. It’s just that there are so many articles popping up about Alltel’s buyout that we can’t help but ask a few questions. Take the article from today’s Arkansas News Bureau. It talks about how employees won’t face pay cuts, probably won’t face layoffs, and have been provided an undisclosed bonus (part of the buyout negotiations). And while that’s nice, we gotta ask: who cares? Sure, Alltel is headquartered in Little Rock, so there’s a community interest in the story. We guess. It’s nice to know that the employees won’t be tossed out on the street, but this definitely isn’t the type of thing we’d read if we weren’t in the cell phone business. And then it then goes on to list the compensation for each member of management and the board of directors. Once again: who cares? What we care about is this: will the rates increase? Will there be an expansion of the coverage area (we still don’t get Alltel by us)? What are the plans moving forward? We mention this because the Arkansas News Bureau isn’t the only place this type of thing has been published. At first, we were ignoring these articles when they appeared in our inbox. But when you see five or six of them, you tend to give it a browse. Give us the meat, please, not the cheese and crackers. [Arkansas News Bureau]]]>