Vodafone To Buy Turkish Mobile Operator
Vodafone has emerged as the winner of the auction for Turkish carrier Telsim, saying it will buy the operator for $4.5 billion. Telsim, the second-biggest mobile carrier in the country with 9 million customers and a 25% share, was auctioned off by the Turkish government following its seizure -- along with 200 other companies -- from the Uzan family after their flagship bank failed. Telsim and the Uzans were also the targets of a long-running fraud lawsuit by Motorola and Nokia, when they borrowed $3 billion to pay for network equipment, then never paid it back. Accordingly, Nokia and Motorola will get more than a billion dollars in proceeds from the auction. The Turkish mobile market only has about 50% penetration, compared to an 80% average or so for all of Europe and with several countries over 100%. Clearly Vodafone thinks there's plenty of room to grow, but investors may not care: Vodafone has been under increasing pressure to raise its dividends, and questions persist about its global strategy.
Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.
Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.
While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.
–The Techdirt Team
