Tuesday, May 17, 2005

A quickie on MicroLink and the Telekom sisters

What a time to be in f**king Cannes instead of Riga. My quick take on the Telekom Sisters (Lietuvos Telekomas, Lattelekom and Elion) buying MicroLink is this:

Most telekoms is going to look and feel like an IT application (VOIP, video on demand, etc), so why not?
The Hansabanka data network account comes with the territory (I think).
Telekoms is merging with IT services, so that the three sisters (and daughters of TeliaSonera, more or less), have got a major regional IT services company.
Outgoing MicroLink founder and chairman Alan Martinsson was saying years ago this would happen (I quoted him in some article somewhere, I think both in that pink newspaper and a defunct publication called Northern Enterprise).
I think this blog may even have touched on the idea of Lattelekom getting MicroLink but then dismissed it as far fetched...he, he...
My only question is are we too far ahead of the game here on telecoms and IT convergence.

My final thought -- are we possibly seeing the seeds of Balttelekom -- a pan Baltic IT/Telekoms organization that will be a subsidiary of TeliaSonera. I think we will see this by 2007, on the eve of the euro. There is no problem registering pan-European corporations now.

Cannes, to my Latvian readers, is one huge balagāns. Watch the pink paper for more.

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