Following a rather unceremonious rejection of a $41 billion offer earlier in the month, rumors are swirling that France Telecom is adding some extra cash onto its bid for TeliaSonera, a juggernaut carrier and ISP serving Nordic and Baltic countries. France Telecom's flagship brand is Orange, and if some sort of deal does go through, it could theoretically lead to Orange becoming one of the dominant carriers in the world with control over a huge swath of European spectrum. The talks, which are apparently still underway, are said to be extremely fragile -- they could end in tears of joy or sadness at any moment -- and France Telecom would like to get a deal done by Monday or Tuesday at the latest. More on this one as it develops.

Update: The bid is dead -- again. Something tells us this isn't the last time we're going to hear about this.

Do you hear that, Helio? That [cue Sir Richard Branson's soothing voice] is the sound of inevitability. Rumors have been swirling for a few weeks now that SK Telecom -- Helio's majority owner -- is getting ready to cut, run, and offload its share to Virgin Mobile, rolling the scrappy MVNO into the one and only virtual network in the US that's been met with substantial, quantifiable success (more recent stock woes notwithstanding). Now, the Financial Times is reporting that a deal is cued up and ready for a public introduction as early as this week. The sooner, the better, because tons of questions remain about the fate of subscribers and the introduction of the pretty hotly anticipated Ocean 2, a device that at one time could've been Helio's savior; too late for that now, we guess.

Unless you've been camped out under a Rhode Island-sized boulder for the past few weeks, chances are you know that Verizon has announced its intentions to acquire Alltel. During a recent interview with CEO Scott Ford, Talk Business host Roby Brock was able to get quite a few talking points out of the exec that didn't involve the most recent transaction. More specifically, Mr. Ford noted that prior to Alltel becoming a private company, it had "tried to buy Sprint three times, tried to buy AT&T Wireless [and] tried to buy T-Mobile." He continued by saying that "some of those times it went with partners, [while] some of those times it didn't." Essentially, Alltel was "doing everything it could to get to a national platform." Believe it or not, those quotes really are just the tip of the iceberg, but the full spill is entirely too detailed for this space. If you're curious to know what might have been, break out the reading glasses and hit the link below.

[Via mocoNews]

Just a quick bit of math and you can see that today's news doesn't bode well for AT&T, which has been enjoying its position at the top of the heap in major US cellphone carriers for quite some time now. While AT&T has a solid 71m subscribers under their belt, number two Verizon has 67m and number five Alltel has 13m -- which means this merger could potentially put 80m customers under the same roof. Clearly being able to claim the "most reliable" AND most widely used network in the US makes it a tantalizing deal for VZW, but the ~$2,100 they'll be paying per subscriber isn't lightyears away from the notoriously overinflated amount Sprint paid in their heyday for Nextel. That merger cost $36 billion, which turned out to be ~$2,350 per sub at around 15 million Nextel customers -- and we all know how well that deal turned out for Sprint. But we're sure they're thinking this will go more along the lines of AT&T's merger with Cingular, which worked out pretty damned well so far. So what's this thing named, anyway? Verizon Alltel? Veritel? Allizon? We think just Verizon, thanks.

Taking a cue from the government to consolidate resources in an effort to get the 3G show on the road, China's China Unicom has kicked off a deal with China Netcom to buy out the landline carrier in a stock swap valued at a staggering $56 billion; the whole thing is expected to close by the end of the year. Separately, China Telecom will swipe China Unicom's CDMA network for about $6.3 billion, setting the stage for a new carrier alignment in the country that'll see three companies align as the 3G powerhouses to serve a grand total of 1.3 billion people. Meanwhile, China Mobile is plodding right along with its TD-SCDMA rollout for the Olympics, so there's really no telling how many standards Chinese subscribers will end up dealing with when all is said and done.

[Via mocoNews]

Read - China Unicom / China Netcom deal
Read - China Unicom / China Telecom deal

This just in: don't believe anything you hear regarding an official 3G rollout date in China. After quite a bit of rigmarole, the Chinese government has finally announced that it will issue a trio of 3G licenses. Notably, the announcement comes with a bit of baggage -- it's also calling for a merger between China Unicom and Netcom, two of its four biggest telecommunications providers. Furthermore, it stated that it would call on China Telecom, the nation's largest fixed-line carrier, to "purchase Unicom's CDMA network," all leading to a massive shuffle that should position three of the nation's telecom juggernauts to eventually offer high-speed wireless to a staggering 1.3 billion people. Unfortunately (though not unexpectedly), there's no time frame given for implementation, but some analysts are asserting that "a full launch of 3G services is [still] years away." Baby steps are better than no steps, we reckon.

[Thanks, James]

Times haven't been so great at Helio, but it looks like the troubled MVNO could be snapped up by Virgin Mobile. mocoNews did a little digging after Virgin's recent Q1 conference call, and says that the two companies are currently in merger talks. Since both companies use Sprint's network, the tech would be compatible, and the deal would give SK Telecom a way to keep Helio going as it tries to gain a foothold in the US market. Nothing's set in stone yet and the two companies aren't talking, but we'll definitely keep an eye on this one.

It's barely been a month since Acer dropped a big chunk of cash to buy up 75% of Packard Bell, but it looks like the company still had plenty of money left to throw around, as it's now parted with a hefty $290 million to buy up 100% of Glofiish smartphone-maker E-Ten. According to Acer itself, the boards of both E-Ten and Acer approved the deal unanimously, and they expect the acquisition to close sometime during the third quarter of this year. Any other details, however, are expectedly light, including any word on how future devices would be branded, with Acer chairmen J.T. Wang only saying that the "acquisition of E-TEN increases Acer's global footprint by giving us a strong and highly credible presence in the mobility segment." No word on any future moves by Acer just yet but, given its recent spending spree, we wouldn't be surprised if it tried to expand that "global footprint" even further.

[Via Phone Scoop]

Well, it looks like the aggressively priced unlimited action really didn't come a moment too soon. We're no economists here, but it doesn't take rocket science, a Ph.D., collegiate level maths, or even a fancy calculator to crunch the cold, hard numbers coming out of Sprint Nextel's fourth quarter earnings call. For starters, the number three carrier in the US reported a net loss of nearly $29.5 billion, which -- get this -- is more than the combined value of its outstanding stock. Let us reiterate for emphasis and drama value: Sprint lost more money in the fourth quarter of 2007 than the company is worth. Wow. If it's any consolation, the staggering figure is largely due to a $29.7 billion write-down of Nextel's value, which as the Wall Street Journal lays out, makes the 2005 merger officially a "Deal From Hell." With postpaid subscribers continuing to migrate to other carriers, there's no telling how to stop the hemorrhaging -- especially if the fresh $99 unlimited plan doesn't end up doing the trick -- but something tells us the move to Kansas isn't going to magically patch it all up.

Sure, the folks in Redmond didn't get their grubby mitts on Yahoo! (yet), but at least they picked up a little something for their mobile division, namely: Danger. According to news just crossing the wires, the monolithic company has picked up the Sidekick-creators for an undisclosed amount, and will subsequently fold the phone-maker into its mobile wing. Is there a Windows Mobile version of the Hiptop in our future? Survey says yes.

It really doesn't come as a surprise following Leap's less-than-enthusiastic response, but yeah, it's official: MetroPCS' offer is no more. The statement MetroPCS issued regarding the whole ordeal is actually kinda sad, revealing that the company "has not been able to engage Leap in meaningful negotiations" -- in other words, it got the cold shoulder. "Talk to the hand," if you will. For its part, though, Metro insists it's still in great shape, touting its recent Los Angeles launch with several more markets in store for '08 and '09. Still has to smart a little, though.

The biggest thing standing in the way of government approval of AT&T's proposed $2.8 billion acquisition of Dobson has been the concern over loss of competition in markets currently served by both carriers -- and it turns out that's a concern AT&T's been working to address from the beginning. In a court filing by the Department of Justice's anti-trust peeps today, it was revealed that AT&T's cool with shedding seven Dobson markets in five states along with Dobson's "Cellular One" brand in order to secure the feds' seal of approval. All the affected markets are rural and apparently represent a tiny percentage of Dobson's customer base (let alone AT&T's) so it doesn't look like anyone's getting too worked up about the sitch. FCC approval of the deal is expected shortly, so by all accounts, the merger looks like a done deal. Welcome to the fold, Dobson customers.

The fact that former Gizmondo peeps are still associated with the vaporware artists at Xero Mobile would send most would-be investors sprinting in the opposite direction, we'd think, but what do we know? After announcing a series of stock swaps, partnerships with companies we've never heard of (whose execs just happen to be on Xero's management team), and failed buyouts, ROK Entertainment Group -- which offers video downloads to phones, apparently -- has inexplicably announced an interest in acquiring the perpetual hype machine. If we had to guess, we'd figure that there's some sort of shady business deal going on behind the scenes that lets parties involved make yet another obscene profit without actually launching any actual product, but we've gotta ask: just how many times can the same team of scam artists run the same con and continue to pad their wallets without getting busted? All we need to see, Xero, is a functional website where we can sign up for one of your ad revenue-subsidized plans you've been touting for ages, and we'll start to believe. Honest!