Born to be Wireless

Telefonica is offering €3 billion ($4.1 billion) for Portugal Telecom's 50 percent stake in their Brazilian mobile JV Vivo. The bid could have a strong element of content consolidation behind it, reports Variety.

Taking full control of the mobile operator would give Telefonica an opportunity to "streamline operations" between Vivo and Terra, Telefonica's ISP in the country. This could have ripple out to Vivo's content partners, which include Fox, local broadcaster Bandeirantes, Warner Bros., and Nickelodeon. For its part, Terra has developed some content partnerships of its own to promote its broadband service, including a special children's portal with Disney and another that it runs in conjunction with Discovery—coincidentally also a partner of Vivo's.

The Spanish incumbent has had some money to play with since closing a deal earlier this month to sell its 75 percent stake in Endemol to a consortium that included the company's founder John de Mol, Italy's Mediaset and Goldman Sachs, for $4.6 billion. But this doesn't mean that PT will sell. PT's CEO Henrique Manuel Fusco Granadeiro told Reuters today that it is not interested in giving up its stake in Vivo. The European operators invested in Brazil—they also include Telecom Italia—have long been embroiled in attempts to wrest control from each other in the market

source:MoCoNews.

Labels: Brazil, Vivo