Norway's Telenor has also been expanding in the region. But Maxis and Regional Wireless have entered firm bids. May. Regulators would likely have blocked a bid because it would have put too much control in the hands of one company. Management would favor Maxis, which is similarly run and could help it expand its mobile operations into Malaysia and then elsewhere in Asia. But MobileOne's owners will now look carefully at the noncash parts of the offers.
Negotiations are likely to drag on for some time.
Mobile-phone companies and licenses once fetched huge premiums. But M1 is up for sale at a time when they have lost a lot of their luster. M1 is also the second-biggest player in a small market. With 880,000 users, it has around a third of Singapore's 2.5 million cell-phone users. Growth prospects are limited given Singapore's total population of around 4 million.