Thirteen groups have applied to bid in the United Kingdom’s auction of third-generation mobile-phone licenses.
The U.K. government by March plans to auction five licenses, with one license exclusively reserved for a player currently not represented in the U.K. market. Each bidder was required to submit a deposit of about $82.3 million. The U.K. Radiocommunications Agency in February is expected to announce the applicants that qualify to take part in the auction, along with the auction start date.
The bidders include:
Orange 3G Ltd.
BT 3G Ltd.
One 2 One Personal Communications Ltd.
Vodafone Ltd.
3G (UK) Ltd., an Eircom company. Eircom is a provider of local, long-distance and international telecommunications services in Ireland.
Crescent Wireless Ltd., a newly organized company whose shareholders have significant interests in Global Crossing. The shareholders of Crescent Wireless have granted an option to Global Crossing to purchase up to 100 percent of Crescent Wireless.
Epsilon Tele.Com plc, a wholly owned subsidiary of Japanese finance house Nomura.
NTL Mobile Ltd., jointly owned by NTL and France Telecom.
One.Tel Global Wireless Ltd., a subsidiary of One.Tel, a global telecom company based in Australia.
SpectrumCo Ltd., formed by Virgin Spectrum Ltd., EMI, Nextel Communications Inc., Sonera and Vulcan Ventures, as well as other investors.
Telefonica UK Ltd., a wholly owned subsidiary of Telefonica SA.
TIW UMTS (UK) Ltd., a subsidiary of TIW, the telecom company listed in Montreal and Atlanta, which also owns U.K. Tetra operator Dolphin.
WorldCom Wireless (UK) Ltd., wholly owned by MCI WorldCom Inc.
Nextel said its consortium, if successful, plans to include and complement Nextel’s business-to-business strategy. MCI WorldCom said it could not comment on its plans in the United Kingdom.
The U.K. government has not required the potential bidders to submit which technology they plan to deploy if they win a license. The European Commission said it will allow European operators to choose non-ETSI standards as long as at least one operator in each country selects an ETSI-chosen standard to allow for pan-European roaming. So far, the European Telecommunications Standards Institute only has accepted wideband Code Division Multiple Access technology, but said it supports the family of standards, which includes cdma2000, adopted by the International Telecommunication Union.
