Telecom has hosed down speculation that its troubled Australian arm AAPT may be folded into the new Vodafone-Hutchison mobile joint venture across the Tasman.
Australian analyst Daniel Blair of Southern Cross Equities told the Sydney Morning Herald that AAPT, the fourth-largest fixed-line operator in Australia, might be
an attraction for the new mobile phone venture unveiled last week.
Telecom owns 10 per cent of the loss-making Hutchison and has a place on its board of directors.
Telecom spokesman Mark Watts repeated Telecom's statement that it was committed to AAPT and said the place on the Hutchison board gave it no inside running on the new joint venture.
He declined to comment further.
New Zealand telecommunications analysts Guy Hallwright of Forsyth Barr and Tristan Joll of Goldman Sachs JBWere were ambivalent about the prospects and implications of a sale.
In December, Hong Kong's Pacnet chief executive Bill Barney said he had an interest in several Australian assets, including AAPT.
The interest appears to have come to nothing. But the asset has come under scrutiny again, with Telecom writing down goodwill for Powertel, part of AAPT, by $68 million, the latest of three writedowns.
"The decline in forecasts was the result of lower earnings expectations for financial year 2009 and lower growth rates for future years arising from economic and competitive conditions," Telecom said in its interim report to December 31.
The question is whether the assets could add value to the new joint venture.
"It would be up to Vodafone to decide," said Hallwright.
In New Zealand, Vodafone dominates Telecom in mobile phones and enforced unbundling of the Telecom network means it is taking on Telecom in the fixed-line sector.
Internationally Vodafone is moving into fixed-line services but in
Australia, where it is the third-ranked mobile network, it has had a tough job.
The merger with Hutchison and its "3" Network will help its mobile presence, but it is not clear it will want to expand its focus on to fixed-line as well.
