Earlier this month, Norway-based Telenor Group agreed to sell 100% of its mobile business in Myanmar to Lebanese investment firm M1 Group. The deal is valued at $105 million.
As recently as 2013, Myanmar was hailed as the last untapped market in Asia, with global telecom giants jockeying to gain a foothold in the market. But since the country suffered a military coup in February 2021, international operators have watched nervously as conditions have deteriorated.
Telecom tycoon Patrick Drahi was born in Casablanca, Morocco in 1963, before moving to France as a teenager.
His cosmopolitan reputation precedes him. He currently holds Israeli, French, and Portuguese citizenship. A renowned art lover, his 2019 takeover of British auction house Sotheby’s thrust him into the UK media spotlight.
Understandably, his recent £2.2 billion ($3.1 billion) acquisition of a 12.1% stake in British communications giant BT has only intensified scrutiny on the notoriously private Drahi.
Last month Luxembourg-based Millicom International Cellular sealed a pair of deals that will see it exit the African telecom sector once and for all.
Its stake in Ghanaian joint venture AirtelTigo was sold to the country’s government. Tigo Tanzania and Zanzibar Telecommunication (Zantel) were offloaded to a consortium led by Axian—the company that previously acquired Millicom’s Senegal-based business in 2018.
In September 2020, U.S. telecom giant Verizon announced the surprise takeover of prepaid MVNO TracFone Wireless. The deal is worth a whopping $6.25 billion.
Verizon hopes that the transaction will help it compete in the prepaid space, where T-Mobile U.S. and AT&T rule the roost with their Metro by T-Mobile and Cricket Wireless brands.
As GlobalComms Database users know, TeleGeography recently reclassified its regions.
This basically means we kicked off 2021 with some Marie Kondo-level tidying by aligning our country-to-region mapping across all of our research. For the GlobalComms team, this included spinning out Oceania from Asia.
Indeed, the exercise gave me the opportunity to check in on happenings in Oceania. And this is why I thought it was the perfect time to take a closer look at one of the region’s major developments: the likely sale of Digicel Pacific.
TeleGeography’s daily CommsUpdate newsletter has featured a staggering 76,000 telecom stories since making its debut back in December 2002!
As a tumultuous year draws to a close, we’re looking back at the telecom stories that captured our readers’ attention during 2020. From shareholder shenanigans to mega-mergers, from tax disputes to 5G launches, the CommsUpdate team left no stone unturned in their quest to bring you the biggest daily news stories.
The Brazilian telecom sector is a hotbed of deal-making activity in 2020. And regional consolidation is a theme.
While industry observers are focused on the high-profile auction of Oi’s mobile assets—which is scheduled to take place on December 14—a series of broadband-centric deals have taken place under the radar.
Today, we explore the companies who are pulling the strings.
Earlier this month, UK fixed-line operator TalkTalk received a proposal from its minority shareholder Toscafund Asset Management.
Toscafund made an offer of GBP0.97 per share in a bid to take the company private. If approved by the company’s owners—who include founder Sir Charles Dunstone, the telco’s majority shareholder—the deal will value TalkTalk at a cool GBP1.1 billion.
