Author: Dan Gendro

The telecom giant has stated that it is open to negotiations for the sale of the fourth largest American wireless carrier.

Deutsche Telekom AG has announced that it is open to discuss the sale of its T-Mobile unit, if it receives an offer that values it at a minimum of $35 per share.

This would mean that the fourth largest U.S. wireless carrier could soon be in different hands.

Some of the Deutsche Telekom senior managers had used the opportunity of a strategy meeting in Berlin, last week, to discuss the valuation of T-Mobile, according to reports that have been made from a source who is close to the matter, but who has remained anonymous due to the confidential nature of the negotiations. The American wireless carrier has previously rejected an offer by Iliad SA of France, which occurred last month at a bid of $33 per share. By the time that this article was written, no higher offer had been presented.

The valuation of T-Mobile by Deutsche Telekom has, however, opened the door to better bids by Iliad or others.

Other potentials could include Dish Network Corp., as it had previously been in negotiations with Sprint Corp., which finally withdrew from talks in August.

Since John Legere became chief executive officer of the wireless carrier, it has managed to add millions of new customers to its previous totals. However, at the same time, holding onto that business comes with a number of potential risks for a parent company. For example, in the American market, it has considerable competition from Verizon Communications Inc. and AT&T Inc in the spectrum auctions that will be held both this year and next year. Moreover, spending must be steadily continued in order to continually upgrade its network.

Deutsche Telekom has a 67 percent stake in T-Mobile. After the announcement of the company’s interest in selling off that ownership – provided that the right offer is made – the wireless carrier’s stock immediately rose by 1.4 percent. It has been valued at $24.1 billion. Right before the announcement, in Frankfurt, the parent company saw a 0.9 percent dip in its own stock price.

The application is designed to change the way that customers pay for purchases in popular locations.

Downtown has now unveiled its mobile payments app in an attempt to provide consumers with a new method of ordering and paying for their food in Palo Alto, in popular meeting spots such as the Coupa Café.

The primary difference that the wallet app could make is in the way consumers are paying for their purchases.

While it has become relatively commonplace to be able to order a meal at many quick service restaurants – particularly when it comes to delivery or take-out – the way that consumers pay for what they buy when they are actually inside a restaurant has stayed somewhat the same. However, Downtown is hoping that its new mobile payments app, which has recently been launched for iOS devices, in-store orders and transactions will be able to be made directly from an iPhone.

Despite the fact that mobile payments services have been slow to take off, companies are still looking for the perfect angle.

Consumers have not been adopting smartphone payments services as quickly as many mobile wallet companies had expected, but many believe that this is simply because the right convenient offering has not yet made it appealing enough for these options to be used. Downtown is using iBeacon technology to allow the restaurant to be able to detect exactly where a customer is sitting, so that he or she can use a smartphone to order food and pay for it, and the restaurant staff will know exactly where that customer is sitting so that it can be delivered directly to him or her.

Although this geolocation based order placing technology is starting off at shops such as cafes, the co-founders of downtown, Xavier de Ryckel, Phillip Buckendorf, and Max Noelle, intend to expand the use of this tech into other areas, as well. They are already planning to move the use of the service into restaurants and even food trucks over the next few months. So far, the mobile payments app is designed to be ideal for small purchases being made in person at Palo Alto businesses.