SoftBank/eAccess - good call - FT.com That is one expensive iPhone. Apple's latest product was the trigger for SoftBank's Y180bn ($2.3bn) all-share deal to buy rival mobile service provider eAccess this week. But unusually for a buyer offering a premium of more than 200 per cent, its shares have risen. Is it just SoftBank, or are investors ready to look at telecoms in a new light? When SoftBank says iPhone 5, read a strong 4G network. Until 4G, Asian telecoms had become either a dully profitable game where leading providers twiddled with user profitability and capital expenditure, or a low-margin business racked by price wars. Data-hungry users have changed that: operators" success depends on what they provide and how (frequencies and capex), while focusing on profits (fewer unlimited plans). Buying eAccess will give SoftBank Japan's biggest bandwidth and frequency range. As a result it gets scale and flexibility, but at a high price. The deal would put eAccess on an enterprise value of Y365bn, including assumed debt, and values eAccess shares at Y52,000 - more than three times their pre-deal price. Put another way, SoftBank has paid an EV of Y88,000 per new mobile subscriber. Assuming it can charge more for the improved network, that does not look extreme when it is only slightly above NTT DoCoMo's implied per-user EV of Y83,000, according to Credit Suisse. Since SoftBank was the first to offer the iPhone in Japan in 2007, its mobile unit has been more successful than expected. That will have helped its shares to rally on the eAccess deal in spite of an estimated dilution of about 5 per cent. The fact that investors look kindly on such lofty premiums suggests new interest in the industry. That does not mean other operators will be able to use investor goodwill as deal currency to quite the same extent. But some will surely think about trying.