Forget the $30 billion offer we talked about last week, the new rumor is a $40 billion deal by Euro giant Vodafone for an AT&T Wireless buy-out. The market cap of AT&T Wireless (traded under AWE) is currently $25.62 billion. AWE is near its 52-week high, and up nearly 60% in the last 3 months.

All bids for AT&T Wireless must be placed by this Friday.

Some investors believe Vodafone’s talk of a mega-bid is just an attempt to drive up the price for more serious bidders (Cingular Wireless and NTT DoCoMo). We’ll see in a few weeks.