Vodaphone Buys Cable & Wireless for £1billion

The big news story in the telecoms this week was that Vodafone agreed to buy the once mighty Cable & Wireless Worldwide for £1.04billion. The deal would move Vodafone from fourth to second in the UK telecoms market, overtaking O2 and Everything Everywhere, and beaten only by BT.

However, it is not all plain sailing, as within hours of the deal being announced on Monday, Cable & Wireless’s biggest shareholder, Orbis Investment Management, refused to back the bid. Orbis has over 19% of the shares in Cable & Wireless, and feels that the offer of 38p per share does not reflect the true value of the company. Orbis stands to lose a great deal of money if the deal goes through.

The only other bidder, Tata Communications, withdrew the previously week having only offered 25p per share. The deal has been supported by JP Morgan Asset Management, Investec Asset Management, Cyrte Investments, RBC Global Asset Management and Sky Investment Counsel, which between them make up almost 20% of the shares.

Cable & Wireless has one of the largest fibre optic networks in the UK, allowing Vodafone to carry more mobile internet traffic at a reduced cost. They provide telecoms networks to 70% of the FTSE 100 and the NHS.

OFCOM confirms some local phone numbers will require full area code

The Daily Mail had this headline a couple of weeks ago: “The 11-digit local phone numbers: Families will have to dial full national code in radical telephone shake-up”. However, what they were reporting wasn’t really news, as it had been reported on the BBC News on 8th September last year.

The official press release from OFCOM on March 20th says: “People living in Bournemouth, Poole and Christchurch will soon have to dial the 01202 area code to make a local call, Ofcom confirmed today. Ofcom has proposed that this change comes into effect on 1 November 2012, subject to consultation. It is designed to safeguard the future supply of landline numbers in the Bournemouth area and avoid the need to change existing phone numbers.”

It went on to explain in that some parts of the UK, phone numbers are becoming scarce, so a small number of people will need to dial the full number when using local phone numbers to enable OFCOM to make more numbers available in these areas. Effectively, the 6 digits after the area code will be able to start with 0 or 1 once they changes come into effect.

To read the full OFCOM press release, click here. To read the Daily Mail article, which warns that many people, particularly the elderly and families, will struggle with this move, click here. To read the original BBC report, click here.