DT Under Pressures At Home... This Is Actually Good News...
This from Wired... I think this will compel DT to be even more
aggressive in their T/Online offering and SEEK partnership.
A good thing...
And, Robert, of course, I agree that the REAL excitement is
yet to come. I bought some more on Friday for just that reason.
****Red-Hot Mobilcom Buys ISP
Reuters
8:05amÿÿ24.Jul.98.PDT
FRANKFURT -- The German mobile phone company Mobilcom, one of the hottest stocks on Germany's Neuer Markt, saw its shares soar 13 percent Friday after announcing it would acquire an Internet service provider.
Mobilcom's chief executive, Gerhard Schmid, said the takeover of Topnet und Datenkommunikations would lead to a significant jump in earnings -- and the news sparked a 68-mark run in Mobilcom shares to 528, an all-time high.
Mobilcom shares are up more than sevenfold since the beginning of the year. They are one of the stars of the Neuer Markt, a new exchange set up about a year ago for growth companies.
Mobilcom, which offers mobile phone services and is also building a fixed network, would be able to use Topnet's high-speed network to greatly expand its capacity, said Schmid, who has a 60 percent stake in Mobilcom.
Analysts agreed the deal strengthened Mobilcom as a challenger to Deutsche Telekom in Germany's liberalized telecoms market. "It's definitely positive," said BHF Bank's Michael Schatzschneider. "Now they have a huge base of subscribers, and with every monthly bill they can cross-market mobile, fixed-line, or Internet services."
Krefeld-based Topnet, one of the largest ISPs in Germany, has 100 access nodes and lines supporting transmission speeds of 100 megabits per second. Mobilcom said it planned to invest US$2.8 million to $5.6 million to boost Topnet's capacity to five times its current state.
Mobilcom began operations reselling mobile phone services from other providers, but started building a fixed network with the opening of Germany's market on 1 January. Earlier this month, the company said it had a total customer base of 689,000 and that its fixed network carried a billion minutes in calls in the second quarter, up from 110 million in the first three months of the year. In the first quarter of this year, its sales increased 60 percent to $61 million. |
