Yet more phone deals
Every week seems to bring one or two billion dollar+ telephone company deals. Here are some of the latest:
MTN to buy Investcom
South African mobile phone company MTN has agreed to buy out mobile phone operator Investcom in a $5.5 billion deal. Lebanon-based Investcom has holdings in other parts of Africa and in the Middle East. These include almost 5 million subscribers in Benin, Cyprus, Ghana, Guinea Bissau, Liberia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen, with new contracts in Afghanistan and Guinea.
MTN already has operations in Iran, Nigeria, Cameroon, Uganda, Rwanda and Swaziland. It recently bought operations in the Ivory Coast and Zambia.
The deal will make MTN the #2 phone company in "emerging markets," with over 28 million subscribers. It is behind only behind #1 Orascom of Egypt, with some 30 million customers.
Of course, the rumor is that the new purchases will make MTN a more attractive target for larger European or Asian telecom companies. The underexploited African market is seen as a big potential growth area.
Sprint Nextel buys UbiquiTel
In a $1.3 billion dollar deal, Sprint Nextel has agreed to buy US company UbiquiTel. UbiquiTel is a wireless affiliate of Sprint, and is based in Pennsylvania. It has half a million cell phone customers in nine states in the West and Midwest. In part, the acquisition will allow Sprint to stop a lawsuit that UbiquiTel started after the Sprint merger with Nextel, because of Nextel competing in assigned UbiquiTel territories. Sprint Nextel has been trying to buy out its affiliates since the merger, including IWO Holdings, US Unwired, and Gulf Coast Wireless. It also bought Nextel affiliate Nextel Partners.
Level 3 buys TelCove
In another merger of US network companies, Level 3 will buy privately-held TelCove for an estimated $1 billion. Both companies provide fiber-optic communications and data networks to corporate customers with a combined total of over 40,000 miles of cable, and they compete as alternatives with much larger operations of Verizon (since the MCI deal) and AT&T. They also sell capacity to cable and phone companies.
The high-capacity cable network business has been a weak one, thanks to overcapacity, But according to a Wall Street Journal article ("Level 3 Adds to Telecom Network", 5/1/06)), things are looking brighter:
"Years of brutal price wars decimated smaller telecom companies founded on giant expectations during the late 1990s. Now they are finally cutting the deals they long have said are necessary to survive. These companies are also benefiting from new habits formed across the Internet. Users are beginning to download reams of video over home and office computers."
This is not the first acquisition for Level 4, which has bought up WilTel Communications Group LLC, Progress Telecom LLC and ICG Communications Inc. TelCove used to be a division of bankrupted cable TV company Adelphia.
10:59:33 PM 
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