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Wireless Federation » archive for 'China Netcom'

Netcom & Unicom together bring China Unicom (Hong Kong) Limited (China)

  • October 15th, 2008
  • 1:15 pm

China Unicom and China Netcom have completed the unification, with the resultant new company, China Unicom (Hong Kong) Limited, established. China Netcom was delisted from the Hong Kong and US bourses with immediate effect. The new company will put together the wireless and fixed line services of the two firms to become a full service provider. It has also pledged to speed up the construction of a 3G mobile network and will champion the uptake of fixed line broadband services.

China United Telecommunications Corporation, parent company of China Unicom, have completed the sale of its CDMA network to China Telecom, with around 20,000 employees transferred to the purchaser.

Netcom intends to take over PCCW-Report (Hong Kong)

  • October 15th, 2008
  • 6:43 am

PCCW’s second largest shareholder China Netcom is planning to buyout other shareholders in lieu of low share prices reportedly. Further, the parties are expected to put forward a proposal in an emergency board meeting while HSBC would arrange financing for the deal. According to an insider, “The sense of the board is that they will be presented with a take-private transaction led by the two lead shareholders and that is already creating controversy at the board level.” Some members believes that a takeover deal have to be offered at about HK$6 a share but wondered if PCCW’s Chairman Richard Li and Netcom would bid that high. The stock sinks as low as to HK$2.45 which is the lowest level since 1999, after PCCW ends sale of stake in its new HKT unit.

PCCW shelves the sale of HKT stake (Hong Kong)

  • October 13th, 2008
  • 6:13 am

PCCW has ended the sale of a stake in its new HKT unit due to economic crisis in the market. The auction is assessed to be worth more than $3 billion which had drawn several private equity bidders. This is the second major Asian deal which had been pulled in the last week due to the global market plunge. China’s Huawei Technologies has pulled its auction for a stake in its mobile handset division, which was said to be worth more than $3.5 billion and also attracted private equity giants. According to the company statement, “The recent market downturn has significantly impacted the offers received . ” Earlier PCCW said that it planned to fold its core media and telecoms businesses into a separate firm called HKT and sell 45 percent of the new company. HKT consists of three PCCW businesses: information technology, telecommunications, and media. PCCW is expecting to spin off HKT into a publicly traded division. They are also hoping to get a minority stake investor in the division before it went public. 20% of PCCW is owned by China Netcom.

China Unicom’s shareholders OK the China Netcom merger (China)

  • September 17th, 2008
  • 6:19 am

The China Unicom gets a thumbs up signal from it’s minority share holders who approved of the Netcom-Unicom merger, as part of the restructuring of China’s telecommunications industry. After the merger, China Netcom will become China Unicom’s wholly wned unit.
It’s minority shareholders also approve of the sale of it’s CDMA operations to China Telecom.
China Telecom will pay an amount of CNY43.8 billion for China Unicom’s CDMA business.

   

Telefonica Spain to increase it’s stake in China Netcom by 5.74% (Spain, China)

  • September 4th, 2008
  • 8:13 am

Telefonica Spain has agreed to higher it’s stake in China Netcom by nearly 5.74%.

The deal will be divided into two stages, in which during the first stage the costing around 368 million euros ($534 million) and during the second it will be between 392 and 434 million euros.

Post- purchase, Telefonica will become the leading private shareholder in the company which will a product of the merger of China Netcom and China Unicom with a stake of 5.5 percent.

   

Telefonica expects strengthened presence in Chinese mobile market (Spain)

  • September 2nd, 2008
  • 9:53 am

According to Telefonica’s Chief Executive Julio Linares the firm is expected to strengthen its presence in the Chinese mobile market, after it’s merger with China Netcom.
“Our aim is to boost our cooperation (with China Netcom) and extend it to other areas with the new (merged) group which have greater potential,” Linares said.
Telefonica is also planning to increase in stake in the new group.

   

China Unicom to spend CNY 100 billion on mobile business in a merger with China Netcom (China)

  • August 18th, 2008
  • 10:42 am

China Unicom has planned to double it’s capex for the mobile business, following the merger with China Netcom.
The mobile capital expenditure, for the total of 2009 and 2010, will approximately be CNY 100 billion and will principally be allocated to the development of the 3G business.
According to the proposed, China Netcom will be China Unicom’s wholly-owned subsidiary.
The merged company needs to have a total subscriber base of 259 million subscribers, including 128 million GSM subscribers, 109 million local access users. The number of sales outlets of the merged company is expected to exceed 18,000, about 5,000 of which were previously operated by Unicom and over 13,000 were operated by Netcom. The merged company is further expected to have approximately 170,000 wireless base stations and approximately 430,000 PHS base stations.

   

China Unicom expects to get 3G licence (China)

  • August 13th, 2008
  • 7:44 am

China Unicom is expecting to get 3G licence after it’a merger with China Netcom. The capital expenditure for next two years to fund the wireless ifrastructure will be nearly $14.6 billion.

According to the company’s statement, the proposed merger, between China Unicom and China Netcom, is expected to be “very substantial” and may get reach 100 billion yuan ($14.6 billion) in 2009 and 2010.

The merger is a part of the wider plan, which will create three national, full-service telecoms carriers.

   

Shake-up pulls down Chinese telecom shares

  • June 4th, 2008
  • 2:20 pm

Chinese telecom stocks dropped more than 12% after China Unicom unveiled 25.8 billion euros (US$40 billion) in deals, with investors cashing out amid lingering uncertainty over Beijing’s industry revamp, a Reuters report said.

Unicom, smaller rival to China Mobile , said it was paying 15.5 billion euros (US$24 billion) to take over fixed line peer China Netcom and selling its underperforming network to China Telecom for over 9.7 billion euros (US$15 billion), the report said.

The moves are aimed at speeding up the roll-out of high-speed, third-generation mobile services for China’s 1.3 billion people.

Shares in Unicom, domestic fixed-line leader China Telecom and smaller player Netcom slid between 12.7 and 14.1%, shedding nearly $15 billion of their value during the trading day, the Reuters report said.

“There’s been profit taking because people were expecting too much in terms of a reform for the whole industry,” said Y.K. Chan, a strategist at Phillip Securities, quoted by the Reuters report.

“Now investors are focusing on acquisitions and capex for these firms to build their networks,” Chan added. “People realize that China Mobile’s dominant position is not going to weaken in the short term and the other players have to pay a high cost to compete.”

Lehman Brothers analyst Paul Wuh estimated that China Telecom, which will buy Unicom’s Code Division Multiple Access network, will spend at least 30 billion yuan (US$4.33 billion) in 2009 and a similar amount in 2010 on that network.

   

 

Mobile and Landline Deals to Update Service in China

  • June 3rd, 2008
  • 2:54 pm

 China Unicom, a provider of mobile telephone services, agreed to buy a fixed-line operator for $24 billion and sell a wireless network for almost $16 billion as China began an overhaul of its telecommunications industry.

The overhaul, announced last month after years of delays, is intended to speed up the introduction of high-speed third-generation mobile services for China’s 1.3 billion people.

The deals give the country’s largest fixed-line operator, China Telecom, a foot in the mobile market while Unicom, the second-ranked mobile operator, gets a fixed-line company, China Netcom.

The advent of third-generation mobile services will mean China’s phone users can join those in advanced economies who already have speedy Internet access, games and extensive multimedia content, from maps to music, on their mobile phones.

Unicom will issue slightly more than 10 billion new shares to buy China Netcom at a ratio of 1.508 to 1 share of Netcom.

The deal is worth about 186.7 billion Hong Kong dollars ($23.9 billion) based on its last closing share price of 18.48 Hong Kong dollars and assuming no outstanding Netcom options are exercised.

It also agreed to sell the smaller of its two wireless networks to China Telecom and its parent firm for 110 billion yuan ($15.9 billion).

“This is the only way China Telecom is going to get into the mobile business,” said Allan Ng, of BOC International.

Analysts said Unicom seemed to win out in both deals and noted that it is getting Netcom at almost a 4 percent premium to its market capitalization of about $23 billion.

Shares in China Unicom, Netcom and Telecom have been suspended since May 23, when the government announced a series of telecom sector leadership changes. They are expected to resume trading on Tuesday.