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mobiliser blog: Softbank buys Vodafone Japan. The Softbank Vodafone Japan Deal is good for the Open Mobile Economy because the Funky Mobile Broadband Show in Japan (mobiliser article from 20.12.05) gets more funky a lot faster.

Having been 8 times to Tokyo since 2000 - at that time Vodafone Japan was still called J-Phone - it is a special honour for me to share my thoughts with you.

As of 28 Feb 06, there are 90.767.700 mobile subs in Japan (excluding PHS) according to TCA Japan. The acquisition target Vodafone K.K. served 15.146.500 subs, KDDI 24.962.700 and NTTDoCoMo 50.658.500. The deal’s Enterprise Value is reported by Vodafone’s CEO Arun Sarin to be £8.9 billion (€12.8 billion). This deal size translates into a subscriber value of €845 which is less than Telefonica paid for O2.

I think Softbank made a good deal. Having recently been awarded a new 3G license for building a new UMTS/HSDPA network in Japan Softbank had originally planned to enter the Japanese mobile market in early 2007 while having to build a new network from scratch. Swallowing Vodafone K.K. they are one year ahead of this plan without having to build a new network. Well done!

Softbank’s CEO Masayoshi Son, who is actually a Korean, is really after Fixed NTT and Mobile NTTDoCoMo. Softbank owns Yahoo Japan and has 5 million ADSL customers. Son-san will be very aggressive. The only way to be aggressive is to offer low-cost mobile data and All-over-IP including Mobile VoIP. This is good for the Digital Lifestyle Customers in Japan.

Softbank will create a Ubiquitous Network Operator (UNO). This UNO will combine the fixed and mobile network into one state-of-the-art service for Ubiquitous Digital Lifestyle Customers. Softbank’s UNO strategy will take into account that fixed bandwidth will always be cheaper and faster than mobile bandwidth. That’s why Digital Lifestyle Customers that consume and produce a lot of data want both: Fixed and Mobile Flat Rates with open ports for All-over-IP. Why not get it from the UNO called Softbank?

As for Vodafone, retreating from the leading mobile market is a sign of weakness. But this weakness might finally be converted into a strength by the time Vodafone manages to reduce their level of marketing arrogance that came from trying to build the “biggest mobile community in the world”.

Vodafone now has a chance to rethink their “global one-for-all strategy”. Vodafone now has a chance to consider opening their networks to new innovative players including Data MVNOs such as OPEN. Being moderate OPEN would not want to buy the Vodafone network, just resell its data capacity.

Original mobiliser blog post with all URLs: http://blog.mobiliser.org/?p=28