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.
Altice USA recently saw its shocking takeover bid for Canada’s Cogeco rejected by the latter’s controlling shareholders, the Audet Family.
The unusually-structured deal would have seen U.S. cable player Altice retain Cogeco’s U.S. business, Atlantic Broadband. However, it would sell the company’s Canadian assets to Rogers Communications, which came as a surprise to industry observers in both markets.
After years of speculation that market liberalization was coming in Ethiopia, in May 2020 authorities kick-started the long-awaited licensing process. The Ethiopian Communications Authority (ECA) issued a request for expressions of interest (EoI) for two new telecom licenses.
With the deadline now passed, we look at the bidders vying to disrupt one of Africa’s last mobile monopolies.
