Our initial goal is to complement both the fixed-line infrastructure and wireless configurations like Vodafone AirTouch.
Britain's Vodafone AirTouch , the world's biggest mobile-phone operator, is mulling a hostile bid for Germany's Mannesmann .
Vodafone AirTouch also plans to sell to multinationals that want a single company to handle all their mobile-communications needs.
"We have agreed between us that Vodafone AirTouch will be making a revised proposal to Mannesmann shareholders, " Mr Gent said.
That may yet hinder this month's hostile takeover bid by Vodafone AirTouch, a mobile-telephone company, for Mannesman, a German firm.
On their heels is top global mobile phone provider Vodafone Airtouch (nyse: VOD - news - people ), held by three of the funds.
Indeed, the influence of Vodafone AirTouch may be enough to resolve a rumbling trade dispute between America and Europe over setting the technical standards for third-generation mobile.
According to Hans Snook, chief executive of Orange, one of the more ambitious mobile firms, the emergence of Vodafone AirTouch is more of a validation than a threat.
He has already made a killing from a big investment in Orange, a British mobile operator that was bought by Mannesmann before the German firm itself became the target of Britain's Vodafone AirTouch.
But the size and buying power of Vodafone AirTouch, as the new entity will be known, will give it unrivalled ability to set technical standards and to extract price reductions from handset and network-equipment manufacturers.
That said, as fixed-line voice telephony becomes a low-growth commodity, it is Sprint's mobile-phone arm and its 4m subscribers that must seem irresistible to Mr Ebbers, especially in the wake of last week's deal to unite the American wireless assets of Vodafone AirTouch with Bell Atlantic's mobile business.
Ten years earlier nobody had heard of either Vodafone or AirTouch.
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The other big global player in sending mobile data through Wireless Access Protocol (WAP) is Vodafone-Airtouch, which just joined with Mannesmann in the world's biggest-ever merger.
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Ideally, Vodafone would buy AirTouch and then sell its American business to Bell for cash.
Vodafone, a British company, snatched AirTouch, an American rival, last January to become the world's biggest operator.
Although Vodafone would have no immediate answer to AirTouch's home-market difficulties, its rival bid offers bags of potential in faster-growing Europe, where both firms have invested keenly, often bidding for licences against each other.
He later became president of AirTouch Communications, which was bought by Vodafone in 1999.
In Asia, too, AirTouch operates in Japan, South Korea and India, while Vodafone is in Hong Kong and Australia.
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