ISTANBUL, Turkey-All four consortia vying for Turkey’s fourth Global System for Mobile communications license withdrew from the auction without bidding. A company owned by Telecom Italia and Turkey’s Isbank grabbed the third license for US$2.52 billion last week.
The third license bid was nearly double the second-highest bid and nearly four times the minimum bid. The other companies vying for one of the two 1800 MHz band licenses asked for a recess after the first license award.
Analysts said Telecom Italia and Isbank made such a high bid to discourage the other participants. The base auction price for the second license was US$2.52 billion, set by the first tender.
The four consortia that dropped out of the auction were led by telecom companies SBC Communications Inc., Spain’s Telefonica, Norway’s Telenor and France Telecom.
The government has not yet announced how or if it will move forward with the second license tender.
Turkey currently is served by two GSM 900 providers, Turkcell and Telsim. Turkcell plans to make an initial public offering of 15 percent of its capital this year, according to a Reuters report. Turkey’s Cukurova Holding owns 50 percent of Turkcell, and Sonera holds 41 percent. The carrier has more than 6.1 million subscribers.
Motorola Inc. owns a small stake in Telsim, which is majority owned by Rumeli Holding. It has about 3 million subscribers.
