EDINBURG, Va. –– West Virginia customers using nTelos will soon be joining the Sprint family.
Sprint-affiliate Shenandoah Telecommunications Company (Shentel) will acquire nTelos in a transaction announced Tuesday.
Shentel will acquire all of nTelos’ stock and operations, wireless network assets, retail stores, and approximately 298,000 retail subscribers.
“We got the coverage maps from nTelos, from AT&T, from Verizon, and from U.S. Cellular,” Shentel’s Wireless Vice President Willy Pertle said. “We engineered a network that will be better than all of them combined.”
It will take several years for that network to come to fruition–partially because nTelos is still upgrading their entire network to 4G LTE. By the close of the transaction, approximately 50 percent of the nTelos nework will have been upgraded.
Shentel intends to invest over $300 million to accelerate their Network Vision LTE upgrade and expansion. They’ll add 150 coverage sites in the process.
“We’re going to try to accelerate that, get it done as fast as possible, and start building those extra 150 cell sites that we need to get the coverage that we want down there,” Pertle said. “We’re hoping to have that done within two or three years.”
Shentel will also plan to upgrade to Sprint Spark, exponentially increasing handset speed. Pertle said these upgrades will play a big role in bringing internet access to West Virginians who don’t have it.
“In West Virginia, and in rural West Virginia, a mobile handset is the only high-speed access that some of these people are going to get,” he said.
Shentel will convert approximately 290,000 nTelos retail wireless customers into Sprint branded affiliate customers, and an additional 8,000 nTelos retail wireless customers into Sprint branded retail customers.
Pertle said nTelos customers will be able to keep their plans as they are now, and possibly even tweak them to improve their monthly bill down the road.
Even by removing one of their competitors, Pertle said West Virginia still remains a highly competitive place for customers.
“The telecommunication industry in West Virginia will be as competitive as ever,” he said.
Shentel plans to convert approximately 38 nTelos retail stores to the Sprint brand upon closure of the transaction. nTelos has exclusive retailers and wireless retailers in a bevy of West Virginia towns–Morgantown, Fairmont, Clarksburg, Bridgeport, Charleston, Elkview, St. Alban’s, Buckhannon, and Belington.
In addition, Shentel will assume control for seven existing Sprint retail locations in the market.
The deal is valued near $640 million. The transaction is expected to close early next year.