Global operator strategies - 25/11/06

Blackstone Group is interested by a stake in Telecom Italia if shareholders wanted to sell. Another mark of the interest of equity firms for the telecom market. In the same time, however, APAX wants to sell its stake in Versatel (Germany) and exit the German telecom market.

Swisscom will start talks with Vodafone about buying back the 25% stake of Vodafone in Swisscom's mobile phone unit.

BT has acquired another Fiat's telecom business. After Atlanet in Italy in February, BT bought Telexis in Brazil.

Neuf Cegetel (France) aggressively markets its new offer: its FMC solution TWIN (allowing to place VOIP calls at home and within WiFi areas, or GSM calls elsewhere) will also work with all rival Internet set-top boxes in the market today; 21 mobile TV channels will be added free of charge to commercialized packages;

Altimo (Russia) has increased its voting stake in Russia's second largest mobile operator VimpelCom by 2.9 points to 35.8%.

China will build 85,000 km of expressway network in the next 30 years, at an estimated cost of $250bn. A portion of this sum will be devoted to roadside communications infrastructure.

The Essar Group (India) is planning to sell up to 10% stake in Hutchison Essar, decreasing its ownership to about 23%.

UBS predicts that China's launch of 3G services will probably be delayed.