Softbank has agreed to acquire telecom services company eAccess for $1.84bn to compete with its rival KDDI.
The acquisition, which is scheduled to be completed in February 2013, is anticipated to help eAccess and Softbank’s unit, Softbank Mobile, use each others available bandwidth.
As per the deal, Softbank will utilise eAccess’s spectrum for its high-speed network called long-term evolution.
Softbank founder Masayoshi Son was quoted by Reuters saying that, "We are paying more than triple the current trading price of eAccess because the benefits come from the company’s existing customer base."
As of 31 August 2102, Softbank has 30.1 million mobile-phone subscribers in Japan while eAccess has 4.2 million subscribers.
Recently, both Softbank and KDDI started rolling out LTE networks for their iPhone 5 customers which are in their early stages and are not having good coverage.
Softbank is planning to add 20,000 base stations by March 2013 and the eAccess network will add an additional 10,000 base stations.
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Softbank, eAccess and KDDI all are behind Japan’s NTT DoCoMo, which has 60.5 million users and provides the rival Samsung Galaxy S3 as well as launched its LTE network back in 2010.
