Vodafone considering $160 Billion bid to buy Verizon

I was excited about this until:

Vodafone Denies Report on Verizon Bid: Financial News - Yahoo! Finance

Monday July 16, 9:06 am ET

LONDON/NEW YORK (Reuters) - Wireless telecommunications company Vodafone Group Plc (LSE:VOD.L - News) denied a report that it was considering a $160 billion bid for Verizon Communications Inc. (NYSE:VZ - News), a move that would consolidate ownership of their wireless joint venture.

 

Wow, I was shocked when I read this. The part where they would sell their land line division off, at&t came into mind as trying to get a hold of that.

 

LOL! That sounds like you'd like Verizon to become Vodafone, right?

Can you imagine, SK Telecom buys Sprint, and then Vodafone buys Verizon? That will pave the way to a world standard where all carriers in the US would finally be able to roam on each other, if not on 3G, maybe on 4G.

 

Yes I think I secretly would like Voda to buy Verizon.

I'm sure the downside would mean layoffs for lots of good people, but I don't work for VZ so I guess I'm not overly sympathetic.

I think I'm just going through a Europe fascination phase right now. I actually wouldn't mind living in London for 2 or 3 months just for the experience. I love castles and reading about medieval kings and queens.

If not, I'll just live vicariously through the false Voda buyout rumor.

 

Would rather have as much of my money as possible going to the US first over a world standard that would also limit competition.....

 

Why would it mean layoffs for lots of good people? Unless Voda decides to downsize the business (highly unlikely), this acquisition shouldn't have to mean layoffs because it would not be a merger of overlapping companies. On the contrary, you would see more people needed for rebranding efforts, marketing and expansion. If anything the only ones that would lose their jobs would be the top execs who never need jobs anyway since they are so rich.

 

Isnt that the truth

 

I wouldn't doubt that it wouldn't go through, but I know they would try their absolute best to do it.

 

I can only dream about Verizon going GSM... sigh.

 

Verizon's BlackBerry 8830 is proof that it can be done too. Research In Motion BlackBerry 8830 Specs & Features (Phone Scoop)

 

well the 8830 is one example and they had a few failures before. I still do not see Voda making the bid for such a high price as they realy had a bad time lining up all the funding for the old AT&T Wireless and see the same happening for VZW. It could very well be a ploy so Verizon thinks things over and accept to buy them out at the right market price

 

The CDMA/GSM hybrid phones are not new — but none of them feature domestic GSM frequencies, it's all for international use.

 

They would probably look to harmonise technologies and would also probably look to harmonise handset availability too when the technologies were harmonised. The tariff side of things would probably remain American in nature.

Incidentally living in London can be very expensive! If you ever do want to spend some time in the UK you would be better off looking at somewhere outside of London, it's cheaper and there is an abundance of interesting things to see around the country. Of course London is easy enough to get to anyway.

If you are interested in medieval history and want anything answered feel free to ask; I studied medieval history at university.

 

A share of any money Verizon Wireless makes already goes to Vodafone anyway. A world standard would bring enormous benefits for Verizon, not the least of which would be the ability to use Vodafone's Passport scheme, which might save many Americans money when roaming abroad.

Personally I don't see that competing standards do much for the consumer. They are fine in the sense that they generate competition on the technical side, but when one standard clearly dominates I think one should adopt it. Most consumers likely don't care about different standards (and probably don't know the difference between them).

 

Yes part of it does go to vodaphone. Although in this case, I guess don't care as much if the money goes to the UK or even Germany, because there it is much more of a level playing field between them and US companies. But I don't like it going to China, etc. When the government of china and others give these companies huge subsidies and unfair advantages....anyway, it's hard not to buy from those countries especially when in many cases you don't even have a choice....free open market is very very good, but the world isn't flat anymore!:wink:

 

I don't think Vodafone are too keen on selling their Verizon Wireless share, why would they? It would probably generate a lot of cash, but then they would be out of the U.S. market and it would likely cost them a great deal more to get back in any meaningful way.

 

There are only two realitisc posisbilituy for Vodafone selling their stake in Verizon Wireless in my opinion. The first would be shareholder pressure. I know there is some at the moment, but I'm not sure if it's strong enough to force their hand. The other would be if Vodafone could acquire another major U.S. network i.e. AT&T. We saw tat posisbility in action when Vodafone tried to buy AT&T, but where beaten by Cingular.

 

to acquire at&t Voda would have to be ready to pay big time for it and they would need to sell their VZW share first and Verizon is not supportive of that as they would have to pay big. The shareholders are not happy with the investmetn as they still to date have not seen a return on investment and all the good stuff is only on paper. One can not blame a shareholder to want to get some money back on thier investment and now they say it will not happen before 2009. I think Voda would want to sell their share and invest it in many areas where it would support their own growth and that include the purchase of at&t with the use of the proceeds from the sale of the VZW share which would make the banks happy to lend them money for. However, I would love to see Voda and at&t merge as this would be the best for both sides.

 

Vodafone owned Airtouch, now part of Verizon Wireless.

COtech

 

A merger is perhaps a more likely possibility since both AT&T and Vodafone are very large companies worth a great deal of money, which would make an acquisition of one by the other a very expensive proposition. That's not to rule out the possibility of an acquisition though, I'm not familiar with AT&T's history, but I know Vodafone hasn't shied away from large purchases in the past.

An acquisition of Vodafone by AT&T would propel AT&T into the network super league as the biggest network in the world in terms of revenue and global reach (Vodafone has those spots at the moment on its own). It would be a tempting proposition for AT&T I imagine. It would instantly give them access to the growing Indian market, markets in just about every continent, and of course access to a large chunk of the European market.

On Vodafone's side acquiring AT&T would give them much better access to the American market and allow them to extend their Passport scheme there, which would no doubt bring in roaming revenue given the traffic between America and Europe (and other parts of the world where Vodafone operates). It would also increase Vodafone's subscriber base by around 30 million people.

Of course this is all speculation at this point.

 

AT&T + Vodafone = Global Monopilazation. They would be a gigantic company, and dominate all telecom.

But what are the chances they do that? Would they sell off Verizon to keep CDMA out of the picture?