Kenneth Campbell, the new CEO of the Bite Group talked to journalists in Riga on July 4 after a couple of months easing into his new job. I did the usual videoblog (see below), but some stuff was said off camera that is noteworthy.
1) Bite Group expects Latvia to be its fast growth, high opportunity market (Lithuania is mature and steady).
2) Bite will try to push the pace of network build-out in Latvia beyond the present 10 base stations/towers per month.
3) In the medium term, there will be more bundled services (XYZ minutes included in the basic fees) and a drift toward flat rate for everything as HSDPA mobile internet and its next generations become ubiquitous.
4) Mid Europa, the private equity company that bought Bite has an investment horizon of five years plus (remember, they are not a telco seeking to permanently have a network presence in Latvia).
My own guess -- no one told me this -- is that Bite is being fattened for a friendly sale to Vodafone in 6 to 8 years. It makes sense and Bite has had a favorable roaming and data roaming deal with Vodafone.
Here is the video, this time from YouTube. BlipTV was OK for a while, it took some longer videos but now screwed up, refusing to open a page where I can copy paste the code for putting a video window on the page, as I have done in some earlier posts.
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