Yet another telecoms industry bid today as Redstone Telecom takes out IDN Telecom. Redstone had already taken on Symphony and Tolerant so this is their third strike.
And behold; after a lousy start to 2006, even Vodafone and BT are in favour now, with share price gains since the summer of 30-40%.
We're also seeing real convergence between fixed and wireless. Redstone's interims stress the acquisition of mobile as well as fixed business, and even Vodafone is now moving into the fixed world. Then you have the strange emergence of Car Phone Warehouse as a telecoms supplier rather than a mobile reseller. Convergence is happening; what intrigues me is that it's happening about five years after everybody thought it would.
The same goes for triple play. It was BSkyB's acquisition of Easynet that kicked this off - and it is still not completely in place, with most smaller ISPs unable to offer the third piece of the jigsaw, TV.
That suggests the market is just recognising the fact that telecoms companies are starting to extract the value from their operations. The typical network fixation of telecoms execs seems to have gone - instead of which they're looking at what their customers actually care enough about to pay for.
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