Posted 11/20/09 at 06:36:43 PM by Ryan Whitwam

In the wake of a major service outage a few weeks ago, fourth place US carrier T-Mobile may be shopping around for investment money from another US cell provider. Compared to the other US carriers, T-Mobile has a very small 3G footprint. Recognizing a need to expand, rumors indicate that parent company Deutsche Telekom is courting the likes of MetroPCS, Clearwire, and even AT&T.

Any of these investors would receive a small stake in T-Mobile in exchange for investment to expand their network. MetroPCS is of particular interest as the smaller carrier uses the same odd 1700Mhz 3G frequency that T-Mobile does. Collaboration with AT&T would be risky due to possible anti-trust allegations. AT&T is the only other GSM carrier in the US.

Deutsche Telekom’s T-Mobile UK was recently forced to merge with Orange UK. Could their US arm be headed in the same direction?

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Posted 09/08/09 at 09:16:59 AM by Paul Lilly

According to The New York Times, Deutsche Telekom and France Telecom -- both of which have been struggling -- plan to join forces in a merger that would create the largest mobile operator in Britain.

As part of the 50-50 venture, the third and fourth largest operators would combine to form a single entity 28.4 million customers strong while gobbling up 37 percent of the market share, putting them ahead of current market leader O2 (27 percent) and Vodafone (25 percent).

"We evaluated all options over the last months and came to the conclusion that this would have the most value for our shareholders," Timotheus Höttges, the Deutsche Telekom chief financial officer, said. "This will give us a stronger foothold in the U.K. market than we had before."

 If approved, the venture would generate around $5.7 billion in savings.;

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Posted 06/26/09 at 12:12:43 AM by Nathan Grayson

Hot on the heels of Bethesda and id’s recent trip down the aisle, we’ve got another pair of game developers joining hands. This time, though, the two developers were already living in the same bloc of the EA Empire, so no one actually bought anyone. Instead, RPG powerhouses BioWare and Mythic simply did a bit of restructuring, resulting in a new RPG and MMO super team.

BioWare General Manager Ray Muzyka is taking the reins of the newborn colossus as General Manager, while BioWare co-founder Greg Zeschuk is serving as Group Creative Officer. Meanwhile, non-group operations are to be managed by respective studio heads, with Rob Denton stepping in as General Manager of Mythic.

But what about former Mythic General Manager and co-founder Mark Jacobs? Well, as of June 23, he’s out. Apparently, Jacobs left of his own accord, though according to an unnamed former Mythic employee, that’s probably hogwash.

“People are shocked and in disbelief about Mark leaving,” he told Massively. “…I can’t even fathom Mark leaving a company he loved so much, it was his life. Personally, I can’t see that this is voluntary in any shape or form.”

Granted, that same source also said that Jacobs had been on sabbatical for the month leading up to his departure, so he’d been doing the business equivalent of tearfully averting his eyes any time someone mentioned the words “leave” or “goodbye” for quite some time – since long before employees knew about the merger, it seems.
 
So, anyone have any conspiracy theories they’d like to throw out? Aside from the old “EA has a secret underground puppy slavery ring” song and dance, we mean. At least put some effort into it.

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Posted 11/24/08 at 02:38:46 PM by Andy Salisbury

A few weeks back Twitter and Facebook ended some big talks, where Facebook was looking to snatch up twitter for $500 million of its stock.

Sometime in mid-October Facebook had instigated talks with the San Francisco- based Twitter about possibly bringing them both together. And while the idea seemed great on paper (the world’s fastest growing microblogging site along with the obscenely popular social networking site), concerns of integration and cost were a large part of why the deal didn’t come to fruition.

Still, Twitter executives and board members felt that they should work on building their own revenues before they look at the possibility of a merger. Currently, they’ve got none.

What the future holds for Twitter, we don’t know. But in the meantime, we’ll continue to keep all of you updated on how we feel by using it.

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Posted 06/19/08 at 02:56:51 PM by Pulkit Chandna

Ace corporate raider Carl Icahn - who has been vigorously pressing upon Yahoo’s board for a deal with Microsoft - has launched his blog The Icahn Report. He might use his blog to announce his course of action in the Microsoft-Yahoo takeover saga.

Although his blog doesn't currently feature anything regarding his on-going proxy battle with Yahoo, it does have fervid posts like "Corporate Democracy is a Myth" with Carl Icahn stamped all over them. Only time - and perhaps his blog - will tell whether he still favors a deal with Microsoft or is statisfied with the recent deal between Yahoo and Google.

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Posted 04/18/07 at 02:22:18 PM by Paul "One4yu2c" Lilly

Gigabyte calls off the proposed merger with Asus that would have led to Gigabyte United.

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