Okay, that headline might be just a wee bit misleading.  Alltel did add a record number of customers and did lose a boatload of money last quarter, but their revenues were actually up 12% as compared to the year before.  But they went private last year and apparently that costs lots of money ? some $653 million worth of merger-related costs, apparently.

I was never any good at economics, but the deal seems to be this:  Alltel added a record 1 million plus customers during the fourth quarter of last year, added a record number of new customers for the full year 2007, and also generated a record $8.8 billion worth of revenues for the year.  And they've got that cool new LG exclusive, the Glimmer, which is really their first high-end handset.

But they were taken over in November and apparently that costs lots of money.  And even though they're now officially a private company, they still have some public debt, so they're continuing to report earnings publicly.  And so the best I could do here was write a true, but knowingly slightly misleading headline, and admit to you once again that I don't understand economics.  If you want to make sense of it yourself, The AP's got the full story.

To make things worse, Alltel doesn't work where I live, so I can't try out that new Glimmer, either.  Wonder if it works in Vegas?