Telia may bid for remains of KPNQwest

Swedish telecommunications operator, Telia may bid for the remains of the bankrupt KPNQwest's network, following a rejection of the bid by parent company KPN for a fraction of what the network was worth.

Telia already owns part of the KPNQwest network in Germany, Italy and France.

Stakeholders in KPNQwest had hoped that some of the troubled group's debt by selling the entire network to one bidder, but these hopes were dashed, when AT&T, which had been tipped as the most likely buyer of the entire European network walked away from the deal last month.

Since then, KPNQwest's high-capacity metropolitan area network in eight European cities has been sold to Interoute, a British telecoms operator.