Cosmote Closer to Buying Romanian 3G Operator

Greece's Cosmote Group is reported to have agreed on a price of EUR 200 million to buy a smaller rival network in Romania, Zapp, which is owned by the Saudi Oger group. Cosmote already owns a mobile network in the country, but lacks the 3G license which Zapp has.

Sources told the Business Standard newspaper that the deal of total takeover of Zapp could be inked next month.

Zapp, originally a Qualcomm backed CDMA450 operator last year secured a 3G license and added a WCDMA overlay to its network. The company also planed to upgrade the speed on its existing CDMA EV-DO network to 3.1Mbps, and to 7.2 Mbps once the UMTS commercial offer will be available. Qualcomm sold its stake in the operator last January.

The Mobile World database estimates that Zapp ended last year with an estimated 516,000 subscribers - which represents a market share of under two percent. Cosmote ended the year with just over 6.1 million customers - and a market share of around 21.5%. Due to their respective market shares, t is unlikely that the acquisition would cause any anti-trust issues.

On the web: Mobile World - Business Standard

Posted to the site on 13th May 2009