For companies such as Sony and Samsung, that already sell digital cameras, mobile telephones and other hand-held devices, the convergence of imaging with telecommunications holds bright prospects in which they start with an advantage over the older firms.
BCE, the telecommunications holding company, will spin off several of the phone companies it controls into a new income trust.
In October it announced it would sell 25% of Svyazinvest, a state-owned telecommunications holding company, to an Italian investor for $1.2 billion.
Italy's biggest phone provider, Telecom Italia, said it was in advanced talks on creating a Spanish telecommunications holding company with the Spanish utilities Union Fenosa and Endesa.
Current law limits foreign owners to one-third of the voting stock of telecommunications holding companies and one-fifth that of operating companies.
Mr. Wallace is reinventing Cable and Wireless from a telecommunications holding concern with a scattering of interests around the world into a leaner telecommunications business focused on serving the business market, not the more visible but less profitable consumer market.
In 1997, Mr. Soros, one of the biggest investors in Russia, joined a group that offered the winning bid for a stake in Svyazinvest, Russia's telecommunications holding company, in the country's largest privatization auction.
Etisalat, the government-owned telecommunications provider, held a virtual monopoly over telecommunication services in Dubai prior to the establishment of other, smaller telecommunications companies such as Emirates Integrated Telecommunications Company (EITC better known as Du) in 2006.
But weakness in shares of retailers and telecommunications companies held back the overall London stock market.
