adverse impact, page-4

ok,ok
I am getting up to speed on your coment,
but this does not look like it bode bad for AMM or its sector in the long term ,
to me more like maybe consolidation eventually

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Cousins set to steer PowerTel
Michael Sainsbury
MAY 10, 2003

SIX-and-a-half years after he quit the troubled pay-TV group Optus Vision, former advertising executive and Publishing & Broadcasting and Billabong board member Geoff Cousins is back in the telecommunications game.

Mr Cousins is heading a syndicate of rich Australians aiming for 62 per cent of struggling wholesale telco PowerTel.
"We believe that over time PowerTel can become the third major force in the market. It's an excellent opportunity really," Mr Cousins said last night.

Mr Cousins is a prime mover in the Roslyndale syndicate, which was specifically formed for this deal and also counts among its members former Packer lieutenant and OzEmail owner Trevor Kennedy and retail entrepreneur Sam Gazal.

The three well-known businessmen will take board seats at PowerTel, with Mr Cousins tipped to take the chair.





But Mr Cousins declined to reveal how much Roslyndale would pay US parent WilTel for its stake until a prospectus was issued for a $16.3 million renounceable rights issue, led by ANZ and Toronto Dominion, and fully underwritten by Roslyndale.

The issue will be based on the issue of 1.5 shares for every existing share at 1c a share. PowerTel shares closed at 6.3c yesterday.

An amount of $21.3 million in debt held by WilTel will be converted at 2.42c a share and accrued interest written off.

The move, announced after the stock market closed yesterday, will see the exit of WilTel from the Australian market.

In 1998 WilTel combined with the Down Town Utilities consortium to pump $200 million into listed telecommunications reseller Spectrum Communications to build an east coast and CBD fibre network.

DTU, which consists of electricity companies Energy Australia (Sydney), Energex (SE Queensland) and CitiPower (Melbourne), retains a shareholding of about 24 per cent in PowerTel.

In November 1996, Mr Cousins quit as chief of Optus Vision, an offshoot of Optus Communications responsible for the $3 billion fibre optic cable network rollout. Plagued with low customer take-up and technology failures, Optus Vision was rolled back into its parent.

PowerTel has an alliance with Macquarie Corporate Telecommunications, which is largely responsible for the increased revenues and traffic across the PowerTel network in the past two years.

PowerTel bought a 10 per cent stake in MCT in May 2001 for about $5 million.

PowerTel said yesterday that its revenues for the first four months of this year were $39 million.

A newly aggressive PowerTel would probably trouble Optus and AAPT, observers said.

PowerTel chief executive Stephen Butler said he would stay.