Vodafone confirms Oskar Mobil takeover

The British mobile phone company, Vodafone Group, has confirmed that it will buy the majority stake of the Canadian company Telesystem International Wireless (TIW) in Oskar Mobil, the smallest of the three Czech cell phone operators. Vodafone, which will also buy TIW's shareholdings in Romania's MobiFon, will pay 3.5 billion US dollars for both operators. The purchase in Oskar, which has an estimated 17 percent share of the Czech market, will cost the British company around one billion dollars.