November 2 (SeeNews) - Cosmote, the wireless unit of Greek telecommunications group OTE, said on Monday it has finalized the acquisition of Romania's Telemobil.
In July Cosmote agreed to buy 100% of Telemobil, which operates the Zapp mobile network, from Saudi company Oger for 207 million euro ($306 million). Telemobil holds a CDMA licence in the 450 MHz band and a 3G license at 2100 MHz. Its 3G network currently covers more than 20 Romanian cities.
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The acquisition of Zapp is an important investment for Cosmote Group and is expected to enhance Cosmote Romania’s growth prospects, enabling the company to offer new mobile broadband services through the 3G license it acquires with Zapp, expand its customer base and make further inroads in the particularly promising corporate market segment, Cosmote said in a statement.
Cosmote Romania had more than 6.3 million customers and a market share of 23% at end-June, less than four years since launching operations.
3G is a generic term covering a range of wireless network technologies, including WCDMA, CDMA, UMTS and EDGE. It combines high-speed mobile access with Internet Protocol (IP) based services.
There are six wireless operators in the country of 21.5 million people: the local units of France's Orange, global telecoms giant Vodafone and Greek Cosmote, Romanian telecommunications group RCS&RDS, Zapp Mobile and fixed-line operator Romtelecom, majority-owned by Greece’ OTE.
($ = 0.6769 euro)