NTT DoCoMo to get $6.5 billion from Cingular-AT&T deal

NTT DoCoMo Wednesday said it will receive around $6.5 billion from Cingular Wireless following the completion of the latter company's $41 billion acquisition of AT&T Wireless.

As a result, NTT DoCoMo announced it expects to book special gains as part of its full-year results. For the year to the end of March 2005, it expects to see a ¥430 billion ($4.0 billion) non-consolidated special gain and a ¥497 billion consolidated special gain as a result of the deal. The company did not revise its earnings forecast because the anticipated gains were already included in a forecast issued in May, it said.

NTT DoCoMo picked up a 16% stake in AT&T Wireless in January 2001. The carrier paid around $10 billion, including the value of a second investment, for the stake but wrote most of this off in 2002 following a sharp drop in AT&T Wireless' share price.

The deal was one of several acquisitions DoCoMo made around the height of the frenzy surrounding third-generation telecommunications services. They were part of its strategy to ensure that carriers around the world rolled out services based on its favored Wideband Code Division Multiple Access (WCDMA) technology rather than the rival CDMA2000 system.

DoCoMo's contract with AT&T Wireless stipulated that the carrier roll out WCDMA service on at least 1,000 cell sites in four cities by the end of 2004 - something the carrier acted upon in July this year when it launched 3G service in Detroit, Phoenix, San Francisco and Seattle.

Cingular's acquisition of AT&T Wireless, which was completed on Wednesday after receiving approval from two U.S. government agencies, leaves NTT DoCoMo without a partner in the U.S. market. The company has been quiet as to its U.S. plans.

The IDG News Service is a Network World affiliate.