T-Mobile USA To Invest Billions; Parent Calls M&A “Less Exciting”

imageHamid Akhavan, head of Deutsche Telekom’s T-Mobile said it does not plan to scale back its investments, which include spending $9 billion (7 billion euros) in the U.S. over a two-year period. Akhavan also told Reuters in an interview that the company plans no acquisitions while it remains expensive to obtain credit. “At the moment it seems more prudent to put M&A on hold given the conditions at the credit markets and how expensive credit is… it just makes M&A less exciting.”

He also said the company will not change its philosophy on spending, as long as consumers continue to buy telecom services. “We are not planning to cut back. 2009 will be at least as high as 2008, maybe even slightly higher in terms of capex.” In particular, he said DT was committed to investing 7 billion euros in the U.S. between 2007 and 2009, and that the market was not expected to be impacted by the stimulus packages, which are being doled out to boost the economy. “While any stimulus will help, given that we have not yet seen a significant downturn in our business in the U.S. my expectation is that we will not also see a significant upturn when these stimulus packages come in.”

Comments have been disabled for this post