The phone giant made public an offer to buy all of MediaOne, the cable service provider. Marketplace's John Dimsdale reports. Armstrong says the move is an indication that Ma Bell is serious about creating a competitive marketplace in telecommunications. I'm John Dimsdale for Marketplace. Two big European phone companies made it official today, Deutsche Telekom and Telecom Italia will try to merge into a vast telecommunications concern with territories extending both north and south from the Alps.
Antitrust regulators have yet to veto the agreement.
Joining us from Washington is Stephan Richter, who runs Transatlantic Futures, an international business consultancy and Art Brodsky, senior editor at Communications Daily. The industrial logic is a different matter that will be very complex with all the antitrust considerations and unions having to agree to firings and so on. And if you can get the Italians to accept the notion of sharing their very phone company with the Germans, this opens the door to all sorts of industrial partnerships across the new Europe. That just can't matter. It must make sense that the managements fit together.