DoCoMo hands over $9.8B for share of AT&T Wireless
But aside from telling the world just how much money is involved, and who gets what stock, both sides in the much-hyped alliance were still not talking about future plans, other than the public relations-speak promise of a paradigm shift.
AT&T (t) Wireless executives would only say, in a prepared statement, that the venture will bring "third-generation services like graphic data presentation, video e-mail, high-quality music downloads, and streaming audio and video to the next generation of mobile technology.”
AT&T Wireless said it will use about $6.2 billion of the cash to expand its footprint, soup up its mobile Internet infrastructure, and invest, according to the statement. The balance of the cash is to pay outstanding debt.
Ever since the deal was announced in November, analysts anointed the new international venture as being possibly just what the U.S. wireless market needs to catch up to the dominant Asian players. --Ben Charny, ZDNet News