When the dust settled on the bidding war for Air-Touch Communications, Vodafone emerged as the proud owner (once the $56 billion deal closes) of 14 million new cellular customers—at an effective cost of $4,300 each. How could any customer base be worth so much money? Maybe it isn't. But multibillion-dollar takeovers are a quick, if costly, way to get around a daunting drawback in the U.S., the world's biggest wireless market: the penetration problem. Some 67 million Americans now tote cell phones, a mere 24% penetration, far lower than in Finland, Israel, Hong Kong and Italy, where the rates are 35% to 50% and climbing fast. The U.S. customer base grows at only three percentage points per year—a lazy pace that would take 25 years to sign up everyone.
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