European Commission and Austrian TCC give approval for Deutsche Telekom's acquisition of Austrian mobile communications operator tele.ring.
The European Commission and the Austrian Telekom-Control Commission (TCC) have given their approval for Deutsche Telekom AG to acquire the Austrian mobile communications company tele.ring Telekom Service GmbH via T-Mobile Austria, a member of the DT Group.
T-Mobile CEO René Obermann welcomed the decision of the European Commission: "This provides all parties with clarity for planning the future development of the business - the teams in Austria will immediately focus on merging the operations of the two companies. The takeover of tele.ring by T-Mobile Austria brings together two highly successful companies with more than three million customers. The combination of the strengths of the two operations, in aggressive price offers and top quality of service, combined with high-quality products such as web'n' walk and HSDPA, will create a powerful company with the potential to become the number 1."
T-Mobile Austria concluded an agreement in August 2005 with the Western Wireless International Austria Corporation, a subsidiary of the Alltel Corporation, USA, for the complete takeover of tele.ring. The purchase price for all the shares in tele.ring was agreed at EUR 1.3 billion.
The European Commission and the TCC made their approval of the takeover of tele.ring subject to several conditions. For example, T-Mobile Austria will hand over to competitors those mobile communications base stations it acquires in the course of the takeover but does not need, along with both the UMTS mobile communications frequencies that tele.ring has been using to date.
Tele.ring is the fourth largest mobile communications operator in Austria, with around 1.1 million mobile communications customers at year-end 2005. The company generated revenues of around EUR 514 million and EBITDA of approximately EUR 161 million last year.
Including T-Mobile Austria's 2.1 million customers (year-end 2005), the merged company will have a share of approximately 37 percent of the Austrian mobile communications market.