AT&T may be putting its outsourced services business in Japan up for sale, according to two sources cited in a Reuters article today.
Acquired from IBM when it bought out IBM's global network business, AT&T's Japanese unit produced around $500 million in annual revenue. While AT&T would not comment on the situation, a potential buyer of the unit could be NTT, which currently owns a 15 percent stake in the unit.
Interestingly, news of AT&T possibly exiting Japan breaks as another rumor emerged on Monday that India's Reliance Communications could be selling its FLAG undersea network and its U.S. Ethernet businesses. These assets could be attractive to either AT&T or its ILEC brother Verizon both of which are looking to expand their reach into the growing Indian telecom market.
Christopher Larsen, an analyst with Piper Jaffray, backed the thesis that AT&T or Verizon could strike a deal to purchase Reliance's undersea cable and Ethernet services assets. "Getting into the Indian market has the potential to be really good because it has higher growth rates than the U.S. and other developed nations and because of the growing amount of U.S.-to-India telecom traffic," he said.
For more:
- Reuters has this article
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