14 DAY TRIAL // Greece's Cosmote Group has agreed to acquire the Romanian mobile service provider Zapp for EUR 200 million, recent reports say, in a move that is meant to offer the company, which already has its own mobile network in the country, access to 3G frequencies, which it lacks, but which the Saudi Oger group-owned Zapp has. According to Business Standard, the deal between the two operators might be settled as soon as next month.
Stefanos Theocharopoulos, general manager of Cosmote Romania, stated last year that the mobile phone carrier was searching for opportunities that would allow it to provide mobile data services, mainly due to the fact that Cosmote, the third largest mobile service provider in Romania, was the only one that didn't have a 3G license, unlike Orange and Vodafone, leaders on the local market, or RCS&RDS, the fourth largest carrier in the country.
Zapp, which was originally a Qualcomm-backed CDMA450 operator, managed to gain a 3G license last year, and enhanced its network with a WCDMA overlay. In addition, the company also announced plans to upgrade the existing CDMA EV-DO network to 3.1Mbps, while also intending to further leverage it to 7.2 Mbps as soon as UMTS would be commercially available. Last January, Qualcomm sold its stake in the carrier.
Neither Cosmote nor Zapp commented on the deal, yet it seems that the negotiations between them started in early March, which means the transaction is expected to be closed before the end of the year. According to the news, Zapp might use the money to repay China Development Bank a EUR 220 million loan it took last year. Currently, Cosmote has the highest growth rate in Romania, placed somewhere at 80 percent, and it is reported to account for around 21.5 percent of the market, with a number of around 6.1 million users.