Western Wireless Corporation (d/b/a Cellular One) was a U.S. wireless carrier headquartered in Bellevue, Washington (3650 131st Avenue SE). It traces to Stanton Communications, founded in 1988 by John W. Stanton and Theresa Gillespie; the Western Wireless Corporation entity was organized in Washington in 1994 by merging Pacific Northwest Cellular and General Cellular Corporation. It went public on NASDAQ (ticker WWCA) in May 1996 and was acquired by Alltel Corporation, closing August 1, 2005, in a stock-and-cash deal valued at roughly $4.4–6 billion; the ticker was delisted on that date. Alltel's 10-K reported ~2,495 domestic employees as of December 31, 2004, and the DOJ cited 2004 revenue of about $1.9 billion and roughly 1.4 million domestic subscribers.
Western Wireless operated analog cellular networks marketed under the Cellular One brand across 88 FCC rural service areas in 19 western and midwestern states, sold handsets, and earned roaming revenue from other carriers' subscribers. It also built digital PCS networks under the VoiceStream brand, which was spun off to shareholders in 1999 and later became T-Mobile USA. Its subsidiary Western Wireless International held mobile licenses and joint ventures in Austria (Tele.Ring), Ireland (Meteor), Slovenia, Croatia, Iceland, Haiti, Bolivia, Georgia, Ghana and Côte d'Ivoire, serving about 1.8 million subscribers. The company owned the Cellular One Group partnership, which licensed the service mark; that mark was divested as a merger condition.
Patent-litigation posture: the case data show one tracked matter, in which Western Wireless appears solely as a defendant (0 plaintiff cases). This is the profile of an operating company defending against an infringement suit, not a patent assertion entity. The venue was the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts — not a plaintiff-friendly district such as the Eastern District of Texas.
Notable case: Freedom Wireless, Inc. v. Boston Communications Group, Inc. et al. (D. Mass.), filed in 2000. Phoenix-based Freedom Wireless asserted patents covering prepaid wireless billing technology (no pass-code entry) against billing provider BCGI and carrier co-defendants Cingular, AT&T Wireless, CMT Partners and Western Wireless. A May 20, 2005 jury verdict awarded $128 million overall; Western Wireless was found jointly liable for a comparatively small portion ($200,000, plus roughly $96,600 prejudgment interest). The parties settled in July 2006 for $87 million total, with the carrier co-defendants contributing $32 million.