Official: Verizon Wireless Absorbing Alltel to Become Largest US Carrier


An excerpt from the story as posted on gizmodo:
We mentioned it yesterday, but now Verizon Wireless is kissing and telling: It will pay around $6 billion for Alltel, adding 13 million customers in 34 states to the Verizon subscriber ranks. That should put Verizon's total at 80 million—high above AT&T's last-reported 71 million customers. Though Alltel and Verizon share the same phone technology, Alltel serves rural markets that Verizon had not built out, so it should mean some nice network expansion too, and "seamless transition" for Alltel customers. Seems like the merger will be completed by the end of the year, and all things will be harmonious and groovy by the second year. We're not seeing many problems with this—it's certainly no Sprint-Nextel fiasco.

My question is:
First off, what does this mean for all current OKC Alltel customers, do they become Verizon customers?

Or does everything stay the same, but Verizon just takes over in a business\branding capacity?

Thoughts please!