AT&T expands into Mexico with $2.5 billion acquisition of Iusacell

AT&T agreed on Friday to buy Iusacell, one of Mexico’s biggest cellphone service providers, for $2.5 billion including debt, as it seeks to expand its international presence by moving southward. The deal comes five months after AT&T sold its stake in América Móvil, Mexico’s biggest phone company, after agreeing to buy DirecTV for $48.5 billion. The American company later acknowledged that it would begin competing directly against its onetime partner. Now it will do so by buying Iusacell, which claims about 8.6 million customers across 70 percent of Mexico. Work on the transaction began in earnest shortly after the sale of the América Móvil stake. Grupo Salinas, which is set to acquire the 50 percent of Iusacell that it doesn’t already own, realized that upgrading the phone carrier’s network to faster wireless data speeds would require an enormous amount of investments.