Verizon Wireless, the second largest North American mobile carrier, announced today having completed the acquisition of Rural Cellular, the Minnesota-based mobile carrier that offers services under the Unicel brand.

The deal was sealed for a total of $2.66 billion (in cash as well as in assumed debt) and it brings Verizon more than 625,000 new customers, who are currently under contract with Unicel.

Moreover, with the acquisition of Unicel, Verizon's licensed coverage is extending on the following US markets: Alabama, Idaho, Maine, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Mississippi, New Hampshire, North Dakota, South Dakota, Oregon, Washington and Wisconsin.

Serving US consumers since 1990 and having "The way wireless should be" as motto, Rural Cellular Corporation (RCC) offers both CDMA and GSM services. In order to get the FCC approval for buying the regional carrier, Verizon needed to guarantee that it would keep the existing GMS towers of Unicel functional. Which it did (and will use them for roaming purposes), thus it is now preparing to take over all the wireless operations of RCC.

The Unicel brand will continue to exist for the next months, but by mid-2009, Verizon will re-brand all of its products and services. For the moment, the subscribers of Unicel do not have to take any action, but they will receive a Verizon letter in the near future, which should explain the "service transition".

Besides fully acquiring Rural Cellular / Unicel, Verizon is also about to complete the acquisition of Alltel, currently the fifth largest mobile carrier in the US. Serving more than 13 million customers, Alltel agreed, earlier this year, to be bought by Verizon by the end of 2008. This will make Verizon the largest mobile operator in the history of North America, while at the same time strengthening the leading position of Vodafone (which owns 45% of the US carrier) in the telecommunications industry.