AT&T’s plans to tackle the Mexico market aren’t just limited to buying a single mobile operator Iusacell. It announced Monday it is buying Iusacell’s competitor Nextel Mexico for $1.875 billion from NII Holdings and will merge its operations into its growing pan-American network.
AT&T closed its $2.5B deal for Iusacell earlier this month, making it the third largest mobile carrier in Mexico. Adding Nextel’s 3 million subscribers will give AT&T about 12.2 million customers in Mexico, but it will remain a distant third place to Mexican giant América Móvil.
Nextel Mexico is one of the many companies to carry the Nextel brand throughout North and South America. The most famous version Nextel Communications was acquired by Sprint a decade ago, and its brand was only recently retired. But several other Nextel’s continued operating in different countries under the NII Holdings umbrella. NII filed for bankruptcy last year, so the AT&T offer has to go through the bankruptcy court. That means it could trigger a potential auction for Nextel Mexico’s assets.
Like the other Nextels, Nextel Mexico runs iDEN Networks, which were once celebrated for their walkie-talkie-like push-to-talk capabilities but fell out of use during the mobile data revolution. Nextel Mexico, however, has since launched a 3G network based on HSPA technology that lines up with AT&T’s technology. It’s also launched LTE in three major cities: Mexico City, Guadalajara and Monterrey.

{"source":"https:\/\/gigaom.com\/2015\/01\/26\/att-to-buy-nextel-mexico-continuing-continental-expansion\/wijax\/49e8740702c6da9341d50357217fb629","varname":"wijax_80b4b26c7e1fb07c3fd3047decb9a79b","title_element":"header","title_class":"widget-title","title_before":"%3Cheader%20class%3D%22widget-title%22%3E","title_after":"%3C%2Fheader%3E"}