Fintur operates in Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan, Georgia and Moldova
Turkcell is looking to acquire the near 59% stake TeliaSonera currently holds in Fintur Holdings, which would give Turkcell full control of Fintur. Fintur controls Kcell, Azercell, Geocell and Moldcell in Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan, Georgia and Moldova, respectively.
The offer also includes TeliaSonera’s 24% direct stake in Kcell, a mobile firm operating in Kazakhstan. If the bid is successful, Turkcell would control 75% of Kcell. It would also gain full control of of Georgia’s Geocell, all of Moldova’s Moldcell, and 51% of Azercell in Azerbaijan.
TeliaSonera said last week it had received interest in its Eurasia operations from several operators. Last year, TeliaSonera said it planned to reduce its presence across the region and instead focus on its European and Swedish operations.
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TeliaSonera’s Eurasia region includes operations in Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Azerbaijan, Tajikistan, Nepal, Georgia and Moldova. In the fourth quarter of 2015, TeliaSonera generated 4.47 billion kronor ($516.2 million) in revenue from its Eurasia operations, representing 19.7% of the telco’s overall revenue in the period.
Vodafone trials 1.2 Gbps LTE in Italy
In other EMEA news, Vodafone said its Italian operations carried out LTE trials using carrier aggregation generating peak download speeds up to 1.2 gigabits per second.
Vodafone Italy also tested 10 gigabit passive optical network technology on its fiber networks, which it said delivered peak download rates of 10 Gbps. Both trials used technology from Huawei.