France Telecom admitted yesterday that it is considering the purchase of the mobile assets of the Spanish company Auna, concentrated in Amena. If it is to take place, the business aims to transform France Telecom into an operator with an integrated service offering. It is recalled that the incumbent French is already in Spain, through Wanadoo, where he operates a fixed telephony operation and a DSL offer with almost half a million users.
Auna, which also manages a cable television operation in Spain, is for sale and has already received proposals from three investors who will be interested in all assets, only in cable and only in the mobile business, the company said without mentioning names.
A France Telecom spokesman confirmed to Reuters that the president of the French operator asked the management to study the possibility of acquiring Auna’s mobile assets, in line with the integrated operator’s strategic objectives that the group has been defending.
This strategy is materialized in the NexT program, which until now has been developing mainly in the domestic market and which provides for the integration of fixed and mobile operations until 2008, creating an offer that differentiates France Telecom from its competitors. The French operator has already taken the first steps to move forward with this strategy also in the British market and the opportunity in Spain seems to be being analyzed in the same perspective.
Amena is the third Spanish mobile operator and accumulated a total of 9.3 million users at the end of last year, with an estimated market value of around 9 billion euros.
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