If he dresses like that, how good could he be?' " Within an hour a friendship had been formed, and within another year or two, the men had started a business, Gotham Broadband, which helped develop business plans and market strategies for telecom concerns.
His flagship business, America Móvil, is one of the largest telecom concerns in the world, with operations in nearly 30 countries.
The company launched in 1996 as a division of Bay Networks, and then became part of the Canadian telecom concern Nortel Networks, which spun it off in 1998.
Danger has impressive venture capital backing, from firms like Mobius Venture Capital, the former Softbank venture fund; Redpoint Ventures; T-Venture, a subsidiary of German telecom giant Deutsche Telekom (nyse: DT); and Orange Ventures, the venture capital arm of French telecom concern Orange SA.
RIM officials have been told of the department of telecoms concerns.
Mr Ranque thinks not, since Alcatel is trying to turn itself into a pure telecoms concern.
Wu Rong of ZTE, a telecoms concern, says it employs mainly locals and is producing more in India.
Such concerns are now pushed to the forefront of the European telecom business, as deal-making accelerates.
America's Corning, the world's leading fibre-optics company, or Alcatel, a French telecoms-equipment concern, are likely to be interested in the business, which may fetch $7 billion.Foreign investors, including News Corp and Goldman Sachs, were said to have taken stakes in ChinaNetcom, a state-owned cable-telecommunications company.
Shareholders in the embattled telecoms-equipment concern, which was formerly the British company GEC, will be left with a mere 0.5% stake.Andersen Worldwide agreed to pay $40m to settle a lawsuit brought by Enron shareholders against the auditor of the bankrupt energy trader.
In Hong Kong, the Hang Seng index was up 0.55%, at 24,255.29, as a rebound in the telecom sector offset concerns over falling commodity prices.
