British Telecommunications Plc said it wasn’t interested in a stake in Australian telecommunications giant Telstra Corp earlier this year (CI No 3,107), and so Telstra’s gone off and joined AT&T Corp’s Worldpartners Association global alliance, taking an equity stake of between 10% and 20%. Other Worldstar equity partners are Japan’s Kokusai Denshin Denwa Co, Singapore Telecom Ltd and Unisource NV. At one stage, Telstra was tipped to take a 10% stake in the BT-MCI Corp Concert joint venture. Now BT will have Asia-Pacific competition not only from Telstra but also from Australia’s second carrier Optus Communications Inc, on which it once also had it eye (CI No 2,856) until Cable and Wireless Plc took over (CI No 3,194).
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