Telefonica Oi buys Brasil-Telecom for 3.5 billion dlrs

0 Comments | AFP, April, 2008

RIO DE JANEIRO (AFP) — Brazilian telecommunications group Oi announced Friday it had bought out rival Brasil Telecom for 3.5 billion dollars (5,863 million reals).

The agreement merges the two largest fixed-line telephone companies in Brazil and creates a giant that controls around 70 percent of the country's telephone land lines.

The new company will also control 18 percent of the mobile phone market and 43 percent of the broadband Internet market, according to company information released in February.

Oi -- formerly known as Grupo Telemar -- said in a statement that the takeover depends on changes in the Brazilian law that forbids one group to control two separate concessions.

The government of Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva has said...