China Mobile Communications Corp, parent of the world's most valuable phone company, is "interested" in making investments in Africa, President Wang Jianzhou said.

"There are many phone operators in Africa," Wang told reporters in Hong Kong yesterday. The Beijing-based parent company of China Mobile Ltd "hasn't participated in the bidding" for MTN Group Ltd, said Wang, who didn't say whether the Chinese company was interested in making an offer later.

China Mobile Communications may join carriers including Bharti Airtel Ltd seeking to invest in MTN, Africa's biggest mobile-phone operator, UBS AG has said. The Chinese company said last month that it was changing its policy of buying controlling stakes only, widening the field of investment targets in its search for a second overseas acquisition.

Vodafone Group Plc, Reliance Communications Ltd and China Mobile Communications may also be interested in investing in MTN, UBS analysts Suresh Mahadevan and John Slettevold wrote in a report on May 6. MTN said on May 5 that it was in "exploratory talks" with Bharti Airtel, India's biggest mobile carrier.

China Mobile Communications owns 74.3 percent of Hong Kong-listed China Mobile, the world's biggest phone company by users. The company had 392.1 million customers at the end of March. The Chinese parent, which last year paid about US$460 million to buy Pakistan's Paktel Ltd, its first acquisition abroad, will consider minority stakes in emerging-market phone carriers in Asia, Africa and the Middle East, Wang said. China Mobile previously only pursued investments that resulted in management control, he said.

Separately, China Mobile Communications has invested 14.2 billion yuan (US$2 billion) in its so-called third-generation wireless network in eight cities including Shanghai and Beijing, Wang said. It's the first time the company has disclosed its investment in the project, which uses the domestically developed time division synchronous code division multiple access, or TD-SCDMA, standard.

China Mobile last month started commercial trials of the 3G service, which allows faster downloads from the Internet. Wang declined to disclose user numbers on the TD-SCDMA network.

(Shanghai Daily May 9, 2008)