Springtime for Nyberg

The suitors are lining up for TeliaSonera under CEO Lars Nyberg (whence the title). Norway's Telenor, an old flame of Telia (1999) who was left at the altar (or stormed away, forgot which) is back, according to press reports. France Telecom is mulling how to bid for the Swedish telco with enough cash in the offer to attract finicky TeliaSonera shareholders. A merger with Telenor would create a real Nordic giant, though still mid-sized by global standards.
This may leave the half-mother of Lattelecom with less time and energy to deal with the wackbat* Latvian government, so she may just take any deal on offer. In other words, do the share swap using the Latvian State Radio and Television Center, get its 100 % of mobile operator LMT (the most profitable of all of TeliaSonera's subsidiaries, I believe) and forget about any covenants in the deal to functionally seperate Lattelecom into wholesale and retail units. By the time the Latvians get around to doing it -- late 2009 is for the real Pollyanna optimists, to my mind-- the European Union will decree functional separation in any case. So it doesn't matter. What matters is to get the f**k out of bed with the government, get LMT and start turning it into a full service telco (including wireline, DSL, LTE wireless internet, etc. in the next couple of years).
*an amalgam of wacko and batshit. I like it.

A Swedish touch phone - iPhone challenger?

Sweden's NeoNode will be launching (in Sweden) its very small touch interface phone. I met them last week in Stockholm, but have only gotten around to editing and posting the videoblog today. Judge for yourselves whether we will have an iPhone challenger here:

Click To Play

One more thing: If you are interested in any of the ads appearing here, please CLICK. I might make some money :)

Marion the librarian and Lattelecom's plan C

No, this is not the title of an Ed Wood movie along the lines of Plan 9 from Outer Space. It has to do with a credible scenario for how Lattelecom could move into mobile WiMax (thus mobile services on a new, very likely flat-fee quad-play package) over the next few years.
First-- let us recall the plans for getting into the mobile market once the connection to Latvian Mobile Telephone (LMT) is eventually broken. Plan A was to buy Bite, but Bite has been bought by others and the price was probably too high for Lattelecom. Plan B-- start a strongly branded and marketed Lattelecom Mobile as a virtual operator on the Bite network (everyone is welcome, the more the merrier...)
Plan C is to wait for mobile WiMax to ripen in 2008 and then go ahead and build out a WiMax network that eventually brings high speed wireless broadband and VOIP plus mobile VOIP to everywhere in Latvia that it is commercially practical. If positioned as a flat fee (though perhaps premium service) mobile WiMax with Skype or some other VOIP service would be the wireless equivalent of free calls on the Latvian network now offered as part of the Mājas komplekts (Home Package) deal.
But we are getting way ahead of events and forgetting about Marion the Librarian? Where does she come it? Lattelecom has just finished its WiMax tests and is evaluating the results. It looks like they will show the viability of the technology--after all, it works in other countries, why not here?
Also, Latvia will soon announce a tender for connecting all 800 libraries, many of them in rural villages, to high-speed broadband. If Lattelecom can win the tender with its test-proven WiMax, it will get at least partial government and European Union financing to unwire the libraries. Then, with many WiMax towers in place, it will have the bones and (some meat) of a national WiMax network, just as mobile WiMax starts to become viable.
So once Lattelecom unwires Marion the Librarian or Baiba bibliotekāre (for all you Latvian speakers) and give her the best of its megabits (do you read sexual innuendo in this? Why?) the next...conquest could be the new mobile communications market that WiMax will open up once the right handsets, antennas and base-stations are available (having built a tower for Marion/Baiba, Lattelecom will just add the new gadgets and software). And we are not too far from the handsets, since we now have multiradio gadgets coming on the market (like the Nokia N-95, talk about sexy), so adding WiMax should be no problemo.
If you ask me, by the time whoever is in the zoo called government in Latvia by late 20o8 finally decides what to do with LMT -- like closing the deal with Telenor Sonera (not a misspelling) or Deutsche Telia or Nordski Telefonski (if the Russians get a big piece of the pie when TeliaSonera is fully privatized and wheeled and dealed into something bigger than itself --OK, maybe Telenorski Telefon :))--when all this is over, Lattelecom just might be ready to go straight to Plan C. We shall ---"C"....

Telenor reportedly interested in TeliaSonera

Norway's Telenor is in preliminary talks to acquire the Swedish government's shares in TeliaSonera, according to the Swedish daily Dagens Nyheter (DN). DN says preliminary contact has taken place between Telenor, the Norwegian state (which owns a bit over 53 % of Telenor) and the Swedish government, which recently filed a bill to approve the sale of TeliaSonera and five other state-owned companies.
DN also claims that Russian financier Mihail Friedman, who holds interests in several Russian and East European telcos through the Altimo holding company, is also interested in the deal. Friedman could be willing to swap his shares in these companies for a slice of a new Nordic-Baltic-Russian telco group. However, both the Norwegians and Swedes are said to be cautious about dealing with the Russian magnate. TeliaSonera, as I have often written, is the half-mother of Latvia's Lattelecom and LMT, and holds controlling interests in Estonia's Elion and LMT as well as Teo and Omintel in Lithuania.
This is just a quick take on it, may write some more later.