MiPhone switching to GSM, adding a new CEO and buying bMobile?
November 6, 2007
Jamaica-So this is what some industry insiders are chatting about this week. MiPhone, (the mobile service provider with the smallest market share in Jamaica) which was bought for a reported US$70 million by the very deep pocketed America Movil, Latin America’s largest mobile service provider owned by billionaire Carlos Slim is about to fly the gate. It is being said that they are switching to GSM and will be adding a new CEO pretty soon. This makes sense, why play hero and keep pushing a platform just because it’s supposed to be a more robust and efficient one.Then the industry conversations got more interesting when it mentioned that it would make sense MiPhone buys Cable & Wireless’ bMobile business, simply because nothing’s happening for CWJ these days it seems. They continue to piss off customers with consistently nonexistent customer service, dodgy internet service, rumours of management bunglings and sudden CEO swaps. And they certainly haven’t been spending any money lately.But alot remains to be seen. Digicel has a serious hold on the market with nimble strategic plays, consistent good customer service, so it will be difficult for MiPhone to wrestle away market share, even now blessed with vision and lots more money than Digicel’s owner O’Brien.Without question, very interesting and great days are ahead for consumers and the industry.Glad I have ringside seats.Previous story: MiPhonebought for U$70million
About time. what i’ld like to know though is will they be able to match the brew service speeds. I know edge should push speed deliverables which are almost equivalent but the other networks who have been dabbling in edge for months now are pushing a horrid browsing speeds. Will miphone be different.
Reason for my concern is i’m a heavy mobile user.. depend on my htc for everything when i’m on the road as i no longer lug my notebook with me. from anything from ssh sessions to whm needs, to sending mail to w/e i’m sure u get the picture. i’m dieing for higher mobile speeds.
It’s going to be exciting times i think. The question that runs through my head is this…will MiPhone now with more money, a clear vision give digicel a run for their money? Jamaica is very much a price sensitive market but is cheapness and freeness really going to dethrone Digicel?
it is known internally that AMX is bringing a new CEO to MiPhone. C&W has been approached before about splitting off the mobile division and that has never been of interest for them, but times have changed. still it would make no sense for AMX to buy MiPhone AND C&W bmobile in Jamaica.
Hmmm…why would it makes no sense for AMX to buy MiPhone AND C&W Mobile in Jamaica…
Yeh.. i dont follow. Buy and merge (based on the fact that miphone will be moving to gsm). it should be easier to integrate seeing that they’ll be buying into cw’s current gsm infrastructure from which they could replicate for miphone and then improve on.
If they buy bmobile (in addition to MiPHone) they will NOT build-out a MiPhone GSM network - they will simply convert the MiPhone(Mega) base to GSM on the bmobile network. Then all the MiPhone acquisition gets AMX is spectrum, which $70 M is an outrageous price for spectrum (in a saturated market). So why buy both? If AMX gets bmobile it will be through a full acquisition of C&W.
I personally think that CDMA is a better technology and hope that GSM will be an addition instead of a converting. And taylor2-I have a HTC CDMA phone/pda which pushes 1x and EV-DO.
cool
[…] 1. MiPhone switching to GSM, adding a new CEO and buying bMobile? […]