Telstra in Talks with San Miguel Corporation

Australian-based telecommunications company, Telstra Corporation Limited, recently confirmed that they are currently in joint-venture talks with San Miguel Corporation (SMC) for a possible investment on the conglomerate’s wireless business.

SMC’s President and Chief Operation Officer, Ramon Ang, also confirmed the on-going negotiation with Australia’s largest telecommunication company through a text message to Reuters.

Although representatives from both parties did confirm the negotiation, neither provided further details about it. However, sources claim that the discussions between the two giants have being going on for several months already prior to the recent confirmation, and it may not be long before the two companies will finally come to an agreement.

A win-win deal for both companies

In an interview conducted by Sydney Morning Herald with Sachin Gupta, Regional Head of Telecommunications Research at Nomura, Gupta said that both companies will benefit from this joint venture. “Telstra does lack emerging-market experience”, but has a wealth of experience in the telecommunications segment. San Miguel, on the other hand, “is an influential conglomerate with ample spectrum holdings, which is good, but it has a weak track record on previous telco attempts”.

Better Network Infrastructure

If this deal come to a fruition, majority of the investment that SMC will receive from Telstra will likely be used to improve its network infrastructure in the country. At least that’s ideally what they should do if they want to go up against the two dominating force in the local scene.

At the time of writing, both SMC and Telstra stated that they have not reached an agreement regarding the matter and “there is no certainty that this will occur.”

[Source]