SINGAPORE-What was to have been one of the most glorious moments in Singapore’s telecommunications history turned out to be a major fiasco when one of the contenders for the nation’s mobile phone license, GTE Corp., said it wanted no part of it.
Just one day after the government announced that it would award a cellular license to P2P Communications, one of its purported partners, GTE, said it was never a part of the winning team.
That revelation not only put the P2P consortium members, NatSteel Ltd. and Teledata Ltd. in a bad light, it also resulted in many people questioning the integrity of the nation’s tender evaluation standards.
The events started unfolding April 24, just one day after the government announced it would award P2P Communications, as well as another British Telecommunications plc-led consortium, mobile phone licenses which were due to be effective on April 1, 2000.
GTE, however, said it was only a “technical consultant and equipment supplier” to P2P and had only agreed to consider taking a 30-percent stake in the company.
The Telecommunication Authority of Singapore later said it would not award P2P the cellular license. However, 20 minutes before TAS issued that statement, P2P said it would not accept the license. But the stripping of the license did not spell the end of P2P’s troubles. According to Singapore laws, if P2P was found to have deliberately misrepresented its case, it could be barred from all future government contracts.
