Vodafone may sell Verizon stake to fund bid

[Kenster]

This was talked about before but I just thought it was interesting to take a peek at this topic again. I don't know when the new Vodafone CEO takes over (I think in June/July) but things will heat up as to what they will do this year. They have the power to dump it's stake in Verizon if they wanted to in order to fund a takeover of a GSM carrier here.

Vodafone may sell Verizon stake to fund bid: report
January 6, 2003
[Channel news asia & Australian IT news]

Vodafone Group plans to sell its US$20 billion interest in US venture Verizon Wireless in order to make a bid to take full control of a rival US mobile phone operator.

The Independent newspaper, quoting US sources, said Vodafone is interested in both Voicestream, the US mobile arm of debt-laden Deutsche Telekom and AT&T Wireless, whose largest shareholder is Japanese operator NTT Docomo.

It added that to fund a bid, Vodafone will exercise its option to sell its 43.3 percent stake in Verizon Wireless to majority shareholder Verizon Communications.

The Independent also said under the shareholder agreement, Vodafone can force Verizon to buy half the stake in July for US$10 billion, and the rest a few months later for a similar amount.

The report said Vodafone's relations with Verizon Wireless had been strained since the US business adopted the CDMA mobile standard instead of the GSM standard used by Vodafone in the rest of the world.

Vodafone wanted to use the GSM standard in the United States, as VoiceStream and AT&T Wireless do, the paper quoted the US sources as saying.

"It said Vodafone had declined to comment on its US strategy but British analysts believed Arun Sarin, who is due to take over as Vodafone chief executive from Chris Gent later this year, was keen to expand the company's business across the Atlantic."

[NYCDru]

So...either VZW will be very strapped for cash money wise, or Verizon Comm. Will take over VZW and make it even bigger tthan it alraedy is?

[Codepyro]

this is old news....fierst of all vodaphone denied these claims...quoting a vodaphone spokesperson " we rather have 45% of coca-cola than 80%? of virgin cola"...vodaphone and verizon also have a joint venture in italy...in which verizon could sell its stake to vodaphone and it has enough money to pay off the difference....

[bobolito]

How did Vodafone expect Verizon to adopt GSM? They were probably dreaming. They should buy Nextwave licenses and start filling gaps with GSM today.

[Kenster]

Codepyro, how do you know what will happen later this year when the new CEO hasn't even started work yet? How do we even have a sense of what his vision is until he steps up to the plate? Vodaphone can deny the rumors they want but again, the new CEO will have a big stake in terms of what he wants done and envisions.

[Pedal2Medal00]

I know this question has come up in many discussions, but in 10 years, do you think CDMA or GSM will be the most extensive coverage. By the way, I would hope Voda wont buy TMobile cause the coverage is awful and most of their GSM towers are mounted on a max of a 6 story building.

[Laaate]

pedalmedal,

how do you know Tmobile towers are primarily on 6 story buildings? that sounds like bullcrap to me.

I hope Voda does buy Tmobile, they'd have the largest GSM network in the US, and you know w/ their leverage they would improve it notwithstanding that fact. Vodafone would be far better suited to acquire the company, its assets and its subscribers and simply exploit their leverage to improve a network with a strong metropolitan infrastructure rather than buying Nextwave spectrum and introducing yet another national provider in the US.

The real question is....will TMobile sell TMobile USA to Vodafone? TMobile is the 3rd largest global carrier and Vodafone is #1. They have a heated rivalry in Continental Europe.

[bobolito]

Originally posted by: Pedal2Medal00
I know this question has come up in many discussions, but in 10 years, do you think CDMA or GSM will be the most extensive coverage. By the way, I would hope Voda wont buy TMobile cause the coverage is awful and most of their GSM towers are mounted on a max of a 6 story building.

CDMA or GSM in 10 years? I tell you what I think: Let's look back and remember when digital service was deployed. It was about 10 years ago when the first digital towers were switched on and still today, analog service is more extensive. GSM came to the US in 1996 and CDMA in 1995. There's one year difference between them, but nowadays, CDMA is more far ahead than GSM. In 10 years, I believe CDMA will still have more coverage than GSM, just like analog still has more coverage than digital. But I also think, that in 10 years we won't be talking about CDMA vs GSM. We'll be talking about CDMA2000 vs WCDMA. Maybe by then, we'll have fully interoperable networks (CDMA2000+WCDMA) which is another form of GAIT (ANSI41+GSM MAP). So perhaps this will change the way we look at covered areas.

About T-Mobile, I have also noticed many of their base station antennas in this area are mounted very low and are very low powered so the signal gets blocked by the building next to it in some cases. They are so low, they only cover like two blocks around them and you can almost reach them with your hand in some cases. In my area, they have many antennas on small two or four story buildings with a cheap tiny panel facing one way only. With the arrival of Cingular last year, I noticed they started installing a lot of new towers a lot taller and in places that made more sense than the old network antennas, so coverage has been improving in some points but they still have a lot to work to do and many holes to patch and I hope they rebuild their network quickly otherwise they will never be competitive in this area. Even some honest T-Mobile fans here admit their network is weak here. Just moving away like 2 blocks from some of their cheaper, low height sites, I lose like 40db of reception. However, with the newer taller sites, I can go almost a mile before I lose 40db. That recent deal with Nortel for new base stations for this area and Chicago is a step in the right direction. Even AT&T GSM, that is so much newer, has better coverage.

[roamer1]

Re the T-Mo site placement comments: It's my understanding that Omnipoint had a very different philosophy to network design in urban areas than did most other carriers, hence all the very low, small microcell-type sites. Here in the Southeast, where T-Mo/VS used to be Powertel, they have lots and lots of "high" sites just like everyone else.

-SC

[Pedal2Medal00]

T-Mobile has a downtown Portland tower located ontop of one of their buildings which is a 4 story building. I get a few blocks away, the signal drops quickly.