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Last week France Télécom offered $42 billion for TeliaSonera but the Swedish-Finnish phone company rejected the bid saying it undervalued the company. Still, the French company insisted a deal remains possible. In a statement, France Télécom said the proposed combination would create the world's fourth-largest mobile operator.



TeliaSonera operates the dominant fixed-line networks in Sweden and Finland and has activities as far as Kazakhstan and the succesful deal would provide France Telecom with the access to faster growing activities in Eastern Europe and Central Asia.



Swedish and Finnish governments together own 51 percent of TeliaSonera. The company was created in the 2002 after the merger of the former Swedish and Finnish state phone companies. The merged Scandinavian group expanded rapidly to the east and now owns 44 percent of MegaFon, Russia's third-largest mobile operator, as well as operators in Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Georgia, Moldova, Ukraine and Turkey.



France Telecom's pursuit of TeliaSonera follows other moves to consolidate by Europe's incumbent operators. Telefonica SA purchased a stake in Telecom Italia SpA last year and Deutsche Telekom plans to take a 25% stake and management control of Hellenic Telecommunications Organization SA.