DAVOS-Vodafone CEO watching AT&T Wireless courting
biz.yahoo.com
Thursday January 22, 11:59 am ET
DAVOS, Switzerland, Jan 22 (Reuters) - British-based mobile phone titan Vodafone Group Plc (London:VOD.L - News) is tracking closely an auction of U.S. peer AT&T Wireless (NYSE:AWE - News), but chief executive Arun Sarin declined to comment on whether he would bid.
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"We have a partnership with (AT&T Wireless rival) Verizon Wireless...Do we watch what's going on in the United States, or how it can affect us? Yes," Sarin told Reuters on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum in Switzerland on Thursday.
Vodafone has a 45-percent stake in Verizon Wireless (NYSE:VZ - News), the largest mobile phone company in the United States. Although it has long sought to control its overseas operations, experts are split about whether it would trade a minority position in the number one player for a majority stake in a smaller rival.
AT&T Wireless, the third-largest U.S. mobile group, has put itself up for sale as it examines its options after a series of lacklustre results. The group said on Thursday it would look at buyout offers as it posted an unexpected fourth-quarter loss.
Sources close to talks have told Reuters potential bidders include larger rival Cingular (NYSE:SBC - News; NYSE:BLS - News), NTT DoCoMo (Tokyo:9437.T - News), the Japanese mobile phone giant that already owns a 16-percent stake, Vodafone, Germany's Deutsche Telekom (XETRA:DTEGn.DE - News) , and Nextel Communications (NasdaqNM:NXTL - News).
Deutsche Telekom owns the number six player in the U.S., T-Mobile USA, and Nextel is the number five mobile operator.
In the meantime, Sarin also predicted that mobile phone calls would become cheaper with the advent of third-generation mobile networks later this year.
"In the United States, consumers can get big bucket plans of 500 minutes or all they can eat. We'll be able to arrange that too, because we get much more capacity," he said.
Another reason why mobile calls would become cheaper was increasing price pressure from fixed-line phones, a result of heavy competition and cost savings from Internet telephony.
"We have to give consumers a fair deal. As prices in fixed telecoms fall, prices in mobile will have to come down substantially as well," he said. |
