SBC Communications Inc and BellSouth Corp, parents of Cingular Wireless LLC, raised their US$30 billion, or US$11 a share, offer for AT&T Wireless Services Inc, a person familiar with the matter said.

　　The offer was sweetened to US$35 billion, according to the New York Times, which cited people close to the auction. The board of Redmond, Washington-based AT&T Wireless, the No. 3 US mobile carrier, is scheduled to meet on Saturday to discuss Cingular's offer and any other bids it may have received, people who requested anonymity have said.

　　AT&T Wireless, which added fewer subscribers than rivals last quarter, put itself up for sale last month and set Friday as the deadline for bids. SBC and BellSouth, seeking to compensate for shrinking local-calling sales, want to combine Redmond, Washington-based AT&T Wireless with Cingular to form the biggest US wireless carrier and be a stronger competitor to Verizon Wireless in the US$80 billion-a-year US market.

　　"It seems Cingular has the most to benefit, so they should have more to spend on it than anyone else," said Dean Gekas, an analyst at State Street Corp, citing the company's ability to eliminate overlapping costs. The price tag is not likely to be much higher than US$35 billion, said Gekas, whose firm owned 70.2 million AT&T Wireless shares in December.

　　Vodafone Group Plc of the UK and Nextel Communications Inc also have expressed an interest in bidding, people who declined to be named have said. Vodafone Chief Executive Arun Sarin won board approval to make a cash and stock offer for AT&T Wireless, the Guardian reported, without saying where it got the information. Vodafone spokesman Ben Padovan declined to comment on whether the company had submitted a bid.

　　NTT DoCoMo Inc of Japan, AT&T Wireless's biggest shareholder, with a 16 percent stake, decided not to bid, according to the Nihon Keizai newspaper. It will consider whether to retain or sell a stake later, the paper said. Mariko Hanaoka, a DoCoMo spokeswoman, declined to comment.

　　Clay Owen, a spokesman for Atlanta-based Cingular, declined to comment, as did SBC spokesman Larry Solomon. BellSouth spokesman Jeff Battcher didn't return calls.

　　AT&T Wireless had told bidders it would make a final decision by the end of the month, people familiar have said.

　　Shares of AT&T Wireless rose 6.5 percent last week in anticipation bids would exceed US$11 a share. On Friday, the stock rose 15 cents to US$11.82.

　　AT&T Wireless needs a partner to compete with bigger and more profitable rivals such as Verizon Wireless, which is 55 percent owned by Verizon Communications Inc and 45 percent owned by Vodafone.

　　(Bloomberg News)