Skype’s share of the global voice market increased
www.WirelessFederation.com/news: Skype’s share of the global voice market has been increased despite a recession that almost halved growth. 8% growth in the international call volumes has been recorded in the past two years as compared to an average 15% over the past quarter century.
406 billion IDD minutes in 2009 has been delivered by the carrier, which is up from 376 billion minutes in 2008. With the rapid growth in the traffic volume, Skype is now the largest provider of cross-border communications in the world, by far.
Google acquires Gizmo5 to take on Skype. Deal valued at US$ 30 Million.
Google has been on the prowl acquiring some strategic companies in what could be termed as the next frontier. After acquring Admob, Techcrunch has reported that it is to acquire VOIP Start-up Gizmo5 for about USD 30 Million.
The deal comes after Skype successfully negotiated a deal with its former owners Niklas Zennstrom and Janus Friis, to maintain full possession of the technology it requires to operate.
Gizmo5, operated by Michael Robertson (of mp3.com fame), was reportedly in discussions with Skype about a potential acquisition should the company lose its legal battle with its former founders. But since that dela has gone through now, Skype no longer requires Gizmo5 as a potential back-up plan.
Google will now set itself up as a VOIP provider to rival Skype, which holds the vast majority of the market and accounts for 8% of all international voice traffic.
While Google already offers a feature for users to speak over the internet via Google Talk/Voice, it does not have the ability to make incoming or outbound calls to “real” telephones – a service Gizmo5 has already established. Interestingly, Gizmo5 has already been integrated with Google Voice, a service that replaces a user’s telephone numbers with a single number for all devices.
Hutchison 3G Austria modernizes its network for HSPA+ and LTE
Hutchison 3G Austria is modernizing its radio access network to be ready for HSPA+ and the next generation of mobile broadband, or LTE. At the same time this step will allow the operator to halve the energy consumption of its base stations. Nokia Siemens Networks will undertake this upgrade starting in autumn 2009.
The demand for increased mobile broadband capacity and throughput in Austria is reflected in the increasing usage of data cards and mobile services like Mobile TV, video download or video sharing,†said Berthold Thoma, CEO of Hutchison 3G Austria. Mobile broadband is also one of the most pragmatic solutions to bridging the digital gap between cities and rural areas. For rural areas, mobile broadband coverage is simply less expensive and faster to deploy than fiber to the home†solutions. We hope that with our nationwide coverage we will contribute significantly to this end.†(more…)
eBay to sell 65% of its stake in Skype for $2 billion
eBay has agreed to sell 65 per cent of its stake in Skype for $1.9 billion in cash and a note of $125 million to an investor group led by Silver Lake and participated by Index Ventures, Andreessen Horowitz and the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board. The company will retain 35 per cent stake in Skype.
The deal, which values the internet calling service at $2.75 billion, is expected to close in the fourth quarter of 2009. eBay had acquired Skype in 2005 by paying $3.1 billion to its founders Niklas Zennstrom and Janus Friis.
Skype is a strong standalone business, but it does not have synergies with our e-commerce and online payments businesses,†John Donahoe, president and CEO, eBay, has said. As a separate company, we believe that Skype will have the focus required to compete effectively in online voice and video communications and accelerate its growth momentum.â€
In April 2009, eBay announced plans to separate Skype from the company, beginning with an IPO in 2010. The decision followed a year-long review of Skype within eBay’s portfolio. As it prepared for an IPO, the company said it would naturally consider bids for Skype that offered an attractive valuation. According to John Donahoe, the deal offered by the investor group achieved that.
This deal achieves our goal of delivering short- and long-term value to eBay and its stockholders, without the possible delays and market risk of an IPO,†Donahoe has said. Selling Skype now at this great valuation, while retaining an equity stake, makes sense for the company. And it allows us to focus all of our energies on the opportunities in front of PayPal and eBay.â€
In 2008, Skype generated revenues of $551 million, a 44 per cent increase compared to 2007. Total eBay revenues for 2008 were $8.5 billion. Registered Skype users reached 405 million by the end of 2008, a 47 per cent increase from 2007. Skype is claimed to attract hundreds of thousands of new users each week.
via Alootechie.
Mega telecom partnerships
In one of the biggest network management and rollout deals globally,
‘s largest GSM operator, Bharti Airtel, has awarded Swedish telecom equipment vendor, Ericsson, a $1 billion outsourcing contract for network management services. Deals such as this, along with the hyper growth, have propelled our telecom sector and operators into global limelight. High sunk costs, rapid technological advances, high obsolescence and intense competition are some reasons for these mega deals and consolidation in the industry.Market access is a prime motive for such partnerships. Vodafone acquired a 10% stake in Bharti for Rs 6,500 crore to get a foothold in the Indian market to expand its worldwide presence. Conversely, Indian companies are eyeing companies outside to expand their access. Tatas recently invested $60 million for a 26% stake in InfraCo, an emerging domestic and international fiber-optic carrier in
. VSNL acquired Teleglobe International, a provider of wholesale voice, data, internet and mobile signaling services for $239 mn, to get access to Teleglobe’s network spanning the globe and having capacity in more than 80 sub-sea and terrestrial cables.
Reliance’s $211 mn acquisition of FLAG, VSNLs $136 mn acquisition of Tyco Global Network, and Bharti’s 8% acquisition in the $500 mn, 20,000 km, next generation undersea cable system SEA-ME-WE-4 project reflect the same intent.
The government-owned MTNL, after a successful foray into
, is actively looking at other markets, including
. Both Reliance and Bharti are in the race for the fifth mobile operator license in
. Since telecom requires large investment in developing networks, apart from market access, many companies try to achieve economies of scale and scope by buying networks from existing service providers. According to Stanley Sigman, the CEO of Cingular in the
, one of the main reasons for him taking over AT&T Wireless in 2004, in a whopping $41 bn deal, was to combine assets of these two companies to take advantage of economies of scale to be the best in the class. We witnessed Tata Teleservices buying Hughes.net to gain access to the basic services market in. Bharti acquired stakes in JT Mobile, Spice and Hexacom to get entry to the Andhra, Karnataka andcircles. In July last year, Essar scooped BPL Communications for Rs 4,400 cr to consolidate its market position in Mumbai,,,and
. Through its $66 mn acquisition of Escotel in January 2004, Idea not only gained the Haryana, Kerala and UP(W) networks of Escotel, but also acquired market access to Rajasthan and HP.
Similarly, VSNL acquired Dishnet in March 2004 for Rs 270 crore to get access to Dishnet’s subscriber base and nationwide network of cyber cafes. VSNL also acquired Tyco Global Network for $130 mn for supplementing its submarine cable-based bandwidth services.
The third major factor for the partnerships in telecom is for companies to have control over emerging technologies. Bharti’s mega deals, of outsourcing its entire network management and operations to Nokia, Ericsson and Siemens, are an example.
A reason is to transfer technology obsolescence and infrastructure upgrading risk to equipment manufacturers. Hutch followed with the outsourcing deal with Nokia. The motive behind the surprise acquisition of a 51% stake by Reliance Capital in Adlabs Films for Rs 360 cr is to use Reliance Infocomm’s nationwide fibre optic network for the digital distribution of movies produced by Adlabs.
Tech companies with niche specialisation such as Sasken Communications Technologies that builds mobile multimedia applications and codec engines, Subex Systems which specialise in advanced telecom fraud management products might well be targets for acquisitions in near future.
While we have been witnessing the above partnerships, the fourth dimension to the partnership is emerging.Technology-intensive companies are also pursuing partnerships with hedging as the main value objective. Companies are getting a stake in technologies unrelated to the core business promise. Notable ones being the recent acquisition of Luxembourg-based Skype Technologies SA, the global internet communications company, by the worlds largest online auction company, eBay, for approximately $2.6 bn.
eBay claims this brings into its e-auction business a powerful communication engine, capable of opening new lines of businesses, new monetisation models and geographies, among other things.
This euphoria over emerging technologies and associated businesses is similar to the ones witnessed over the dotcoms in the mid-90s. Whether this momentum will continue is anyone’s guess.
While telecom companies in
,
and theare vying to acquire companies outside their countries at astronomical prices, global giants such as Vodafone are divesting their stake in foreign telcos. Vodafone terminated its Japanese mobile telecom business by selling it to Softbank for $8.9 bn and is even planning to exit from the
operator, Verizon. The telecom bubble that burst and left big holes in the
telecom industry, notable ones being AOL-Time Warner, and MCI-WorldCom, is slowly gaining momentum again.
The Indian telecom scenario, as we have seen, is also abuzz with hyper growth, with associated consolidations and new partnerships. Let us hope this one,unlike the dotcom burst, is a sustainable bubble in the making!
Source- http://www.financialexpress.com
Technorati : Bharti Airtel, Ericsson, GSM, MTNL, Mobile, Reliance
Ice Rocket : Bharti Airtel, Ericsson, GSM, MTNL, Mobile, Reliance
