Global operator strategies - 21/09/07

Publié le 21 septembre 2007 par Jean Arnal

DT bought SunCom Wireless, a regional operator in the USA, for $2.4bn in cash and debt. Suncom has about 1.1m subscribers in south east region. DT also bought Immobilienscout stake for about €360m.

Vivendi (France) is planning external growth. It plans to take about 30% stake in Oger Telecom (Turkey, S. Africa, Lebanon, Jordan, S. Arabia,..).

Yahoo will buy email service developer Zimbra for $350m.

Paetec is to buy McLeod USA in a $492m deal.

Azerbaijan has launched a feasibility study of privatizing state-owned AzTelekom and BakTelecom.

Turkey has canceled the tender for the 3G license given last week to Turkcell, because it was the only bidder.

Verizon Wireless and Vodafone will both use Long Term Evolution (LTE) technology as the 4G evolution path for their respective networks. The news raised more questions: will Verizon effectively abandon CDMA in the long term? What is the future of CDMA Rev C.? Will Verizon and Vodafone finally work together?

Telefonica is considering raising stake in China Netcom or investigating to establish and expand long-term, strategic partnerships with Chinese telecom companies.