The attitudes of the late 1990s, where operators found it necessary to have a presence in as many countries as possible, have begun to fade as the cost of having many fingers in many pies becomes glaringly clear.
Deutsche Telekom used to boast that it was the only European operator with a nationwide GSM presence in the United States. Its U.S. subsidiary VoiceStream will likely be sold after Germany’s national elections in September to reduce the German operator’s high debt load, ending that claim.
NTT DoCoMo has spent billions of dollars buying stakes in operators in Europe, Asia and the United States to ensure its i-mode technology and W-CDMA technology would be rolled out in other regions of the world. It said last week it does not mind if its 16-percent stake in AT&T Wireless Services is reduced. It also has recently found that forging agreements with other operators to roll out its i-mode technology works just as well without taking stakes in-and paying a lot of money to-those operators.
DoCoMo announced last week Telef
