The week may be winding down, but AT&T isn’t letting Friday go without one more major announcement.

AT&T will acquire Mexican wireless carrier Iusacell for $2.5 billion USD. In exchange for all of those dollars, AT&T will get Iusacell’s licenses, network assets, retail stores and all of its 8.6 million customers.

The deal will be reviewed by Mexican regulators and is expected to close in the first quarter of 2015. 

Once the deal is done, AT&T plans to expand on Iusacell’s 3G GSM network that consists between 20 and 25MHz of 800MHz spectrum as well as an average of 39MHz of PCS airwaves. Iusacell’s network currently covers around 70 percent of Mexico’s 120 million people.

I’ve noted in the past that wireless growth is starting to slow in the U.S., and so carriers are going to begin looking for other ways to grow their customer base. This AT&T acquisition seems to be in that vein, in that the big blue carrier is buying up a Mexican carrier with the hopes of expanding its network and getting more consumers onto that service.

Via AT&T