Communications provider Vodafone has confirmed that it is "in the very early stages" of considering whether or not to make a £700 Million cash offer (estimated) for global telecoms giant Cable & Wireless Worldwide (C&W).

Demand for Mobile Broadband services (data traffic), especially in terms of related backhaul capacity, is soaring and some speculate that Vodafone could be looking towards C&W's fixed line supplier network to help balance its growing costs.

The move, if carried forward, could also give Vodafone access to a sizeable chunk of C&W's unbundled ( LLU ) broadband network in the UK. The LLU network helps to supply a number of smaller and medium sized ISPs, such as Tesco Broadband, with flexible internet access solutions.

Such a development could worry some of C&W's LLU partners in the UK. Vodafone has a shaky history in the country's fixed line broadband ISP market and gave up on its own 'Vodafone At Home' service last December 2011 (here). Not that anybody was surprised; Vodafone had been slowly phasing its home broadband service out for awhile.


It's no secret that C&W has been struggling with financial problems and some all too frequent managerial changes. The company has reportedly lost 74% of its share value over the past year alone and is currently worth between £500m to £600m. Shares in C&WW were up by over 20% on early trading and Vodafone also saw a more marginal climb of less than 1%.