Telefonica,Vivo to own Telesp total shares (S Africa)
Telefonica and Vivo have approved the exchange ratio for their planned merger. Each Vivo share will be exchanged for 1.55 new Telesp shares.
The transaction awaits for approval by Vivo and Telesp shareholders. Following the completion of the merger, Telefonica will own 73.8 percent of the total share capital of Telesp.
Telefonica plans to invest $14.6 bn in Brazil
Spain’s Telefonica is planning to invest US$14.6 billion in Brazil in the 2011-2014 periods, an increase of 52% over the prior four years. This will help tap the surging demand for telecommunications services in Latin America’s biggest economy.
According to the company, the amount includes funds to finance possible acquisitions and to purchase of operating licenses. Telefonica, the largest telecom group serving Latin America, invested US$9.6 billion in Brazil between 2007 and 2010.
The Madrid-based company controls Brazil’s largest wireless carrier Vivo Participacoes and fixed-line company Telesp. The announcement came after Telefonica Chairman Cesar Alierta met Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff in Brasilia to present the company’s capital spending plan.
Telefonica plans to invest $14.6 billion in Brazilian subsidiary (Spain, Brazil)
Spain’s Telefonica is planning to invest over US$14.6 billion in its Brazilian subsidiary by 2014. According to Telefonica’s Chairman, C©sar Alierta, the expenditure would be used to upgrade and expand the network. He made the announcement following a meeting with Brazil’s President, Dilma Rousseff.
As per Alierta, they are investing heavily in expanding their services and networks with the aim of covering close to 100% of Brazil’s municipalities with telephone and broadband internet, both fixed and mobile. Their objective is to have the most modern networks in Brazil and to be pioneers in introducing new technologies to the country.
The announcement represents a 52% increase over its network CAPEX over the past four years, but will also include the expected cost of buying new mobile licenses in the forthcoming spectrum sales.
BOKU partners with O2 and mpass in Germany for direct mobile billing
Telef³nica O2 Germany, a leading provider of broadband and mobile services, and BOKU Inc., the global leader in online mobile payments, today announced a direct carrier billing relationship. O2 customers can now use BOKU’s payment platform to purchase virtual and digital goods ranging from .09 Euros to 30.00 Euros. O2customers pay for goods by entering their mobile number and charging directly to their mobile phone carrier bill.
O2 is part of Telef³nica, a leading global provider of broadband and mobile services, and the second largest carrier group in the world. O2‘s mpass system allows direct carrier billing for the purchase of virtual, digital and physical goods.
This new partnership integrates the BOKU mobile payments platform into O2 Germany’s operator billing interface, enabling the following advanced features:
- Support for one-off and subscription payments in Germany
- Full pricing granularity from .09 Euros to 30.00 Euros
- Authorization and Capture APIs with refund support
- In-App Billing support
- Web Billing support
The Boku service offers consumers a quicker and easier way to pay online when compared with existing credit card solutions.
This agreement opens up the opportunity for BOKU merchants to offer payment for physical goods as well as virtual and digital goods,†said James Patmore, Managing Director, BOKU in EMEA. Our partnership with O2 confirms our vision of evolving online mobile payments into a range of new vertical markets.â€
Understanding customer needs and merchant requirements in regards to our payment products is essential for continuing our success story in the mobile payment area. A close collaboration with BOKU ensures we position ourselves closely to the key players in the market,†said Michiel van Eldik, Managing Director Wholesale and Partner Management, Telef³nica O2 Germany.
We want to provide our customers with a safe, reliable, and convenient payment solution to pay for goods, be they virtual or physical,†continued O2‘s van Eldik. BOKU’s mobile payments platform has the right blend of technology and finance-grade infrastructure to mesh well with O2 customer needs.â€
BOKU’s bank-grade mobile payment service is available to online merchants and publishers on a global scale. The BOKU service enables merchants and publishers to drive incremental revenue by offering carrier billing as a payment option to their customers. BOKU is connected to 230 mobile operators in more than 65 countries, and provides access to more than 2.5 billion potential customers who can pay by mobile.
Telefonica O2 Slovakia launches online chat pilot
Telefonica O2 Slovakia has started the pilot operation of the Online Chat service for communication with customers.
The company will now be able to invite a visitor of the O2 website for an online chat. Customers can provide their suggestions and get online guidance for some services.
In the first stage, only an invitation by the operator for online chat will be enabled. The aim of the pilot is a survey of interest in this kind of communication.
Mobile network operators dialing in on data revenue
A research has revealed that mobile network operators, which once provided a simple phone and messaging service, are now evolving, catering to the consumers needs to offer a multi-platform technology experience via the mobile phone. This change, when the mobile network operators become providers of a rich mobile experience, requires investments and new strategic approaches to make business sustainable and competitive in front of new strong market entries and fresh patterns of consumption.
According to researchers, this increasingly constant demand for data has led large Western Europe mobile groups Deutsche Telekom – T-Mobile, France Telecom – Orange, Telefonica, and Vodafone Group to show signs of improvement with expected fourth quarter earnings in 2010.
The increasing trend in data demand is illustrated by the growing data revenue stream among these major mobile network operators. This data crave resulting from the penetration of the smart phone and other high-end devices, is leading these key Western Europe mobile groups to begin discussion of geographic expansion.
Researchers explain that with growing mobile penetration, mobile groups are facing an intensely price competitive and regulated environment. In order to generate a diversified income stream, expanding geographic operations from Europe, particularly to attractive emerging markets, becomes one of the market trends.
Both France Telecom – Orange and Vodafone Group have a large presence in Europe, Africa, and the Middle East. Deutsche Telekom Group covers a majority of European countries, while Telefonica has vast coverage in the Americas.
Researchers added that most mobile groups aim to develop and introduce new services to consumers and business customers.
Vodafone Group’s strategic focus in 2011 will be on Europe, Africa and India (where the demand for telecommunications services is growing rapidly), while developing new services and corporate segments. France Telecom – Orange will implement cloud computing services to reach a goal of generating 500 million Euros by 2015. They also hope to become the number one videoconferencing provider in France. In Germany, Deutsche Telekom Group will continue a nationwide installation of their 4G network. They also plan on introducing new B2B cloud services outside of Germany. Telefonica plans to capitalize on both the Strategic Alliance Agreement signed with China Unicom as well as their new partnership with Jasper Wireless.
Ericsson and Vantrix partner for video optimization
Vantrix, the global leader of mobile video optimization and delivery solutions, today announced that it has been selected by Ericsson, the world’s leading provider of technology and services to telecom operators, to be their partner in video optimization. Under the terms of the agreement, Ericsson will be bundling Vantrix Bandwidth Optimizer with its Multiservice Proxy mobile broadband traffic optimization solution.
We predict that the number of global mobile broadband subscriptions will double during 2011 to 1 billion, and that video traffic will represent significant portion of the overall mobile data trafficâ€
We predict that the number of global mobile broadband subscriptions will double during 2011, to 1 billion, and that video traffic will represent significant portion of the overall mobile data traffic,†said Sanjay Kaul, Vice President, Consumer and Business Applications at Ericsson. The partnership will address our customers’ need to efficiently manage, optimize video content delivery over mobile networks, where the quality of experience becomes key.â€
Vantrix Bandwidth Optimizer optimizes video and delivers it in real time while maintaining best-in-class Quality of Experience. Vantrix Bandwidth Optimizer provides up to 70 percent savings on network CAPEX and OPEX (RAN, backhaul and core) by dynamically monitoring network congestion and substantially reducing the size of videos.
Mobile video has become an integral part of daily life and it has transformed how consumers use their mobile phones. Over the last two years, as video has become more dominant in mobile networks, mobile subscribers have endured outages and reductions in speed, resulting in an unsatisfactory video experience,†said Allan Benchetrit, President & CEO of Vantrix. We are very proud to partner with Ericsson to provide the market with the most advanced and efficient mobile video technology. Our solution is the most advanced to control, optimize and manage the delivery of video in mobile networks, while actually improving the current viewing experience.â€
About Vantrix
Vantrix, the global leader of mobile video optimization and delivery solutions, improves mobile and converged video economics for its customers by ensuring that content is delivered cost effectively, and with the best possible user experience, regardless of the service, device or network. Vantrix solutions are deployed in over 70 networks, serving over 1 billion subscribers worldwide. Vantrix is proud to count among its customers: Sprint (NYSE:S), Orange, Telefonica (NYSE:TEF), T-Mobile, TeliaSonera (OMX:TLSN), MTS, Etisalat (ADX:ETISALAT), Saudi Telecom Company (TADAWUL:STC), and Tata Telecom. Vantrix is headquartered in Montreal with offices in London, Hong Kong and Dubai. To learn more about Vantrix, visit www.vantrix.com.
O2 Germany plans to launch LTE on July 1
Telefonica O2 Germany is planning to launch commercial LTE services on July 1. The news emerged this week, although the operator has made conservative estimates about the speed of its new network.
According to report, O2 Germany did not provide pricing details during a press conference at CeBIT in Hanover, but stated that its new network will offer connection speeds in line with an average DSL connection. By comparison rival operator Vodafone, which launched LTE in Germany in December 2010, offers connection speeds ranging from 7.2 Mbps up to 50 Mbps.
As per German telecoms regulator Bundesnetzagentur’s last report, broadband speeds typically fall between 2 Mbps and 10 Mbps. The watchdog didn’t break down connection speeds by access technology, but in terms of penetration DSL accounted for just below 90% of Germany’s 25 million broadband connections at the end of 2009.
Telefonica full year profits increased by nearly 30%
Telefonica has reported that its full-year revenues rose by 7.1% to US$83.6 billion, spurred by a solid performance in this item in Latin America (+13.3%) and Europe (+12.7%) and the growing contribution of the mobile data business.
Net profit jumped by nearly a third 30.8% to US$14 billion.
The strong growth posted by Telefonica Latinoam©rica and Telefonica Europe drove Telefonica’s solid performance, offsetting the lower contribution of the core business in Spain.
In 2010, Telefonica Latinoamerica and Telefonica Europe accounted for 68% of consolidated revenues, whereas Telefonica Spain’s contribution stood below 31%.
The company added 19.2 million net new customers during 2010, a growth of 7.2% in organic terms (excluding acquisitions) to end the year with 287.6 million subscribers.
Telefonica invested over US$14.87 million in 2010, including the spectrum and license acquisitions carried out in Germany and Mexico. In Spain, despite the difficult economic climate, the company increased its investment by 8.4% to US$2.75 billion.
Net financial debt increased by US$16.52 billion to reach US$76.57 billion at the end of the year.
TeliaSonera submits bid to buy Poland’s Polkomtel (Sweden)
Sweden’s TeliaSonera has confirmed that it has submitted a bid for Polish mobile network operator, Polkomtel – which has been put up for sale by its shareholders.
The company is supposed to be worth around US$5 billion.
According to TeliaSonera’s spokeswoman, they did put in an indicative offer and the advisers to the sellers will select who can continue.
Polkomtel, which trades as the Plus network is owned by Vodafone (24.4%), PKN Orlen (24.4%), KGHM Polska Miedz’ (24.4%), Polska Grupa Energetyczna (21.85%) and Weglokoks (4.98%)
It had been previously reported that Apax Partners, Blackstone, TPG and CVC Capital Partners are among the big private equity groups working on potential bids for the Polish company, although that was before the formal tender document was issued last month.
In total, some 20 companies, including Telenor, Telefonica and America Movil have purchased bid documents, although that is sometimes for information about competitors rather than an indication that they want to buy the company.
Vodafone has a right of first refusal to buy out the other shareholders but has indicated that it would prefer to sell instead and recently split the shareholding out from its European division indicating that a sale was imminent.
