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Technology Stocks : Vodafone-Airtouch (NYSE: VOD) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: MrGreenJeans who wrote (1733)	4/14/1999 9:14:00 PM
From: MrGreenJeans	Respond to of 3175

AIRTOUCH: Bell retreats from partnership By Richard Waters in New York Bell Atlantic yesterday took another step towards dissolving its partnership with AirTouch, as it revealed it would abandon a wireless communications joint venture between the two US companies. The move is likely to increase the pressure on UK-based Vodafone to invest to build its own nationwide wireless network in the US once its $62bn purchase of AirTouch is completed. In a regulatory filing, Bell Atlantic said that it intends to exercise its option to dissolve PrimeCo, a company that it set up with AirTouch to operate a wireless network in parts of the country where neither side had a presence. The alliance never developed far beyond PrimeCo and relations between the two sides have cooled since Vodafone capped Bell Atlantic's own takeover bid for AirTouch earlier this year. PrimeCo has about 1m customers and a network that covers 41m potential subscribers in the Midwestern and Southeastern parts of the country, making it the second-biggest so-called PCS carrier in the US. The PCS companies, led by Sprint PCS, represent the first generation of digital wireless carriers in the US and were created after the Federal auction of wireless licences in the early 1990s. Based on the price of recent acquisitions, wireless companies sell for as much as $85 for each potential customer covered by their network, said Mark Lowenstein, a senior vice-president at the Yankee Group, a telecom consultancy. While PrimeCo's networks reach 41m people, its licences cover a potential population of 60m in all. If the joint venture is disbanded, PrimeCo's assets will be divided equally between its owners, the two sides said. Bell Atlantic, meanwhile, is set to extend its own wireless network into parts of AirTouch's territory through its pending acquisition of GTE. Its broader partnership agreement with AirTouch forbids such competition but Bell Atlantic has started a legal action to have that agreement torn up.

To: MrGreenJeans who wrote (1733)	4/14/1999 9:17:00 PM
From: MrGreenJeans	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 3175

Financial Times, 4/15-Lex Broken line Three months on, the battle for AirTouch has produced its first casualty. Bell Atlantic has announced it will dissolve PrimeCo, its mobile telephone joint venture with AirTouch, as soon as the latter completes its merger with Vodafone. This is not entirely unexpected. After all, Bell lost out to the UK cellular operator in January's $60bn bidding war for AirTouch. At the time, all sides professed continued enthusiasm for PrimeCo, which covers 41m people in the middle of the US, filling the hole between AirTouch's west coast presence and Bell's east coast franchise. AirTouch could buy out Bell's stake in PrimeCo but the move still has the effect of depriving both companies of a national wireless footprint when AT&T and Sprint are making hay with country-wide cellular coverage and one-rate tariff plans. For Bell, however, other considerations are more important. PrimeCo's strict non-compete agreements potentially threaten its proposed merger with GTE, another big phone company, whose substantial cellular assets overlap with AirTouch and PrimeCo. Assuming that merger goes ahead, Bell will still have a substantial US footprint. Vodafone AirTouch, by contrast, will have at the very least to build its east coast presence piecemeal, either by buying small operators like Omnipoint or picking up left-over mobile licenses. This will take time and money the group would probably rather spend internationally.