As the high-tech telecom market started to collapse in March of 2000, you began to experience a decline in confidence and then ultimately a situation where the market was no longer receptive, not just to high-tech or telecom transactions, but virtually any transaction.
As well as bashing AT&T on air, the company has clashed with its rivals over telecoms regulation.The transaction could have implications for firms which make operating systems for smartphones and provide apps for them, such as Google.
Like another, smaller acquisition on the same day the purchase of the Irish business of Spain's Telefónica for €780m by Three, owned by Hong Kong's Hutchison Whampoa the deal reflects the strife that bedevils European telecoms companies.The Irish transaction may bring a little balm to two familiar sources of pain.
Now he is preaching a new gospel: Internet infrastructure, which supports providers of telecom software and services, back-end transaction software or consulting services that help companies get online.
Depending on how business relationships are defined, a bandwidth-heavy content provider like Apple Computer could voluntarily pay the telecom company 5 cents to 10 cents per transaction for priority bandwidth access, presumably speeding up an iTunes customer's video download.
The firms are extending the deadline for exclusive negotiations to August 31, from the date of July 31 set in late May, "as discussions between the parties regarding the potential transaction are continuing," the telecoms said on Monday.
"Most of the companies in Europe would not be survivors in a transaction [between U.S. and European telecom companies]," Ebbers bluntly told an Oct. 5 press conference.
Such concerns may be what lay behind the anti-consolidation comments voiced yesterday by Seidenberg, Verizon's co-chief executive, at a Credit Suisse First Boston telecom conference in Orlando, Fla. "A horizontal transaction is less strategic for us," Seidenberg said, as quoted by Reuters.
Said Ebbers at a press conference about the WorldCom/Sprint deal in New York on Oct. 5: "Most of the companies in Europe would not be survivors in a transaction [between U.S. and European telecom companies]." Yet inside Jurassic Park some of the dinosaurs are looking remarkably frisky, even showing signs of adapting to their newly deregulated surroundings.
Such firms may well use their clout to get the banks to reduce their charges on card transactions.Many telecoms firms, too, see the growth of mobile payments as their chance to break into a lucrative new business.
