Reports indicate pair of moves by German telecom giant
Germany’s largest phone company, Deutsche Telekom, is looking to sell the country’s most popular Internet portal, T-Online, according to newspaper reports. Company sources told Wirtschafts Woche that the giant telco is in talks to sell T-Online to the Axel Springer media group.
If a deal is realized, it would combine the most popular Web portal that counts 374 million visitors in Germany with Axel Springer’s third most popular Internet portal, Bild.de with 295 million visitors. Ebay holds the No. 2 position with 314 million visitors. Such an acquisition would likely undergo scrutiny from anti-competition authorities.
And there may be more on the sales block. The Handelsblatt reported that Axel Springer is also interested in acquiring Telekom’s online marketer, Interactive Media, which markets portals such as Kicker Online, Wetter.info and AutoScout24.
Neither company has commented on the rumors.
More telecom news from EMEA:
EE, Qualcomm and Huawei reach 410 megabits per second with LTE Category 9 test. The three companies boasted super-fast speeds from the test of LTE Cat 9 connectivity with three-carrier downlink aggregation. In the international collaboration, U.S. chipmaker Qualcomm used its Snapdragon 810 processor with integrated LTE-Advanced modem together with an infrastructure solution from Chinese manufacturer Huawei across the LTE-A network of U.K. operator EE.
Telenor Denmark selects Nokia for voice over LTE. The Danish operator completed its first VoLTE session using Nokia Networks technology and plans to offer the service to its Danish customers. VoLTE allows high-definition voice calls to be made over an LTE network with such benefits as higher voice quality and faster call setup times.
Iliad’s Xavier Niel to buy Orange Switzerland for $2.9 billion. Xavier Niel, the French billionaire who owns a controlling interest in the French telco Iliad, is preparing to acquire Orange Switzerland for $2.9 billion. The move comes after Iliad’s efforts to buy T-Mobile US were rejected earlier this year. A subsidiary of Niel’s investment fund Kima Ventures is set to buy the Swiss operator from the private equity group Apax Partners.
Russian operators MTS and Vimpelcom team up as ruble plunges. The telecom companies signed an agreement to build and operate LTE networks in 36 Russian regions, with MTS set to build and operate base stations in 19 regions and Vimpelcom to handle the other 17 regions. The two companies plan to share base stations, platforms, infrastructure and transportation network resources for the first seven years, while each maintains its own core network.
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