TELECOM TREMORS

摘要

Vodafone's Chris Gent started it. Deutsche Telekom's Ron Sommer followed, with France Telecom's Michel Bon right behind. The goal was to win a place in Europe's mobile Internet, and the strategy appeared disarmingly simple: Spend, spend, spend. First, spend from $50 billion to $200 billion to buy a stable of smaller mobile carriers. Then, pay whatever it takes to win next-generation mobile licenses at the priciest auctions in history. Finally, build up loads of mobile Internet services and start dotting the region with multibillion-dollar networks.