France Telecom officially confirmed that they are in negotiation to purchase Norwegian Telenor and Swiss TeliaSonera. Both Nordic operators are big players on former Soviet republic's telecom market and a great portion of France Telecom interest roots probably exactly in this feature.
France Telecom is Europe’s third telecom operator in terms of capitalization ($86.9 billion), yielding only to Vodafone and Telefonica. The 2007 revenues reached $82 billion. The company owns assets in Eastern Europe, including Romania, Moldova and Russia (the Orange brand with services rendered to corporative clients exclusively), as well as in the United States, Central Africa, China and Vietnam.
The market capitalization of TeliaSonera equals $38 billion and Telenor has $35 billion. In Russia, TeliaSonera owns 40.8 percent in MegaFon, it also has cellular assets in Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan, Georgia and Moldova. Telenor holds 33.6 percent in VimpelCom and has 56.5 percent in Ukrainian Kyivstar.
I think France Telecom will pave the way to Russia for a few big telecom brands. “Russia has been long the blank spot on the map of Europe’s biggest telecom brands, though France Telecom, Vodafone and Telefonica are present in the overwhelming majority of European states. One of the reasons why France Telecom wants to buy out one of two Scandinavian operators, is perhaps, the chance to promptly turn into a noticeable player on the markets of Russia and CIS, where the actual penetration of cellular communication is much less than in Eastern Europe.
In case the deals happens it will give inspiration to other big telecom companies to try to hold firm presence in respectable markets, since most of them are growing economies.
On the other hand Russian government recently made it clear that it won't allow big companies to dominate the market and have M&A with other companies. I am certain it’s a right policy for now. As we can see in Korea there are only three major companies: SK Telecom, KTF, LG Telecom, we could say there is not much competition, no price wars. Monthly plans are almost same with minor differences and the basic cost of commuting is very expensive with other countries.
I am convinced that telecom companies in Korea are working unethically, since they have highly advanced technologies just like in Europe and US and charge more. I believe doing business should be about bringing value and serving not just about making money.
20600793, entry #6
1 comment:
I believe doing business should be about bringing value and serving not just about making money.
This rule is not applicable to TeliaSonera - the Swedish Government controlled group is acting like real mafia.
Under the name of so called "investment protection" they have built a very strong mutually acceptable cooperation model with governments and politicians.
You can see result of this curruption and bribery based policy: hundreds of smaller competitors are out of business, tens of violetions that are not seen by official regulators (they are simply "switched off" by TeliaSonera), this is what makes their profits growing.
In Lithuania TeliaSonera has been spying it's competitiors by very sophisticated system called ACB/ITSS. The system works together with a service provided by the vendors (Cibertek, Costa Rika). This is a mutimillion "investment" that allowed TeliaSonera to record all DTMFs dialed by all customers.
Lithuanian Prosecutor General invstigating this scandal stated that the collected information is ILLEGAL but also concluded that the TeliaSonera gang has been doing this by accident.. At the same time TeliaSonera mafina has been spreading lie that the ACB/ITSS is a part of regular service equipment used in Europe. In reality here is the list of contries where the system has been used:
Costa Rica, Panama, Nicaragua, Honduras, Ukraine, Philippines, Singapore, Morocco, Colombia, Malaysia, Mexico, Ecuador, Caribbean Islands, BVI, Jamaica, Cayman Is, Barbados, Armenia, Kirgizstan.
You may ask why we are not going to courts? The answer is simple this mafia owns whole infrastructure starting from regulators to technical experts, judges. So if you go to court (as we did 5 years ago), it will take you ENDLESS process and this mafia never looses.
Is this what European Union sees as a model for modern society?
No matter how long time it takes, no matter how much efforts needed TeliaSonera will have to respond for it's criminal actions against our companies and compensate all losses.
TeliaSonera MUST STOP SPREADING CORRUPTION AND BRIBERY IN LITHUANIA.
www.dbs.lt
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