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A joint venture between Chicago-based Ameritech Corp. and Deutsche Telekom of Germany is paying $850 million to increase its stake in MATAV, the Hungarian telephone company, to 67 percent from 30 percent.
MATAV is the first state-owned phone company to be privatized in Eastern and Central Europe. It has 1.83 million phone lines in a service area of 7.7 million people, and there are 524,050 pending requests for lines.
Ameritech’s deepening involvement in Hungary comes after the Belgian government announced that it had selected a consortium headed by Ameritech to acquire a 49.9 percent stake in Belgium’s domestic and international phone carrier for $2.4 billion.
