In a Spanish-Italian deal Pirelli is selling its Telecom Italia shares to Telefonica, who will own the largest stake, totalling 43%.

Other - primarily US - investor groups, such as AT&T, won't get access to the Italian incumbent.

As Repubblica reports today, Telefonica is joined by the banks Intesa-Sanpaolo and Mediobanca (each 10.6%), Benetton (8.4%) and the insurance company Generali (28.1%).

Telefonica brings the operational expertise, while the other owners seem to fulfill the requirement to keep the majority ownership in Italian hands while having no idea how to run a telecom operator.

Today within Telecom Italia there's a major decision to be expected with regard to selling its mobile phone business. The latest news was that Telefonica and private equity company Carlyle could buy it. Also Deutsche Telekom and other private equity funds were mentioned.

The very latest news now says that trading of its stock has been suspended because of a board meeting so we will indeed see some news pretty soon.

Convergence has probably been THE buzzword in the tele- and datacom industry for many years. At different times it meant different things. I remember at the beginning it was about computer and telephone integration (CTI). This was before we talked about VoIP. That - apart from call centers - never took off until the IP PBXs started replacing the analog/digital PBXs. This is still in a slow replacement process, mainly because of the fact that the PBX industry and the datacom industry could not be more different in how and how fast they move (try explaining to a PBX guy how TCP/IP works or explaining to a datacom guy the endless call handling feature list there is with a PBX and you know what I am talking about...)

Then came the wireless phone and data service integration over e.g. GPRS, which got RIM's Blackberry up and running - plus a lot of others running after it. VoIP finally - after the huge success of Skype - got on the roadmaps of the telcos (for the user side; in the core network it's already been a big success for quite some time due to the enormous cost savings), but they still have to figure out how to offer it and make money with it.

Now things are converging between the home phone and the cellphone. Telecom Italia announced that it sold 2.5 million handsets worth 400 million EUR at a reseller event in Barcelona. This big order was for Samsung SGH P200-based phone service, a cordless phone using VoIP at home which then becomes a cellphone when you leave your home. The service includes e-mail as well all for a flat monthly fee of 15 EUR. Also Deutsche Telecom announced plans for a similiar service, to be ready in the next few months.

Shortly after 3 in Italy, the Hutchison Whampoa owned group, announced to start with mobile TV exclusively showing soccer world cup games, the two other mobile network providers published their plans as well:

Telecom Italia announced that in June it will start to broadcast "Serie A" and Champions League soccer games, in addition to different free-to-air channels.
Vodafone Italia last week signed a deal with Mediaset, the privately-held television network owned by former Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi's family, but will not commercialize the P920 until the end of summer.

In South Korea mobile TV reached 440'000 subscribers within a year.