Dutch Operators To Roll Out Joint 3G Network

date: April 29, 2002 - source: BWCS

Dutch UMTS licensees 3G Blue and Dutchtone have announced that they will establish a joint venture to construct a combined 3G network. According to Telecom Paper the two operators plan to select a single supplier for their 3G network infrastructure in an effort to maximise economies of scale and reduce their UMTS deployment costs.

The two companies first revealed their plans to jointly develop and deploy their basic non-intelligent 3G infrastructure in December 2001. According to their licence terms 3G Blue and Dutchtone are required to achieve 84% population coverage by the 1st of January 2007. Both operators believe network sharing is the most cost-effective way of meeting this deadline. Dutchtone is majority-owned by France Telecom and 3G Blue is backed by a consortium including Deutsche Telekom and Dutch GSM 1800 operator Ben, which itself is owned by TDC and Belgacom.

The Dutch telecoms regulator, OPTA, permits 3G operators to share the cost of rolling out their networks on the condition that they still competed with each other in the provision of services. Two other Dutch 3G licensees, KPN Mobile and Telfort, have also agreed to share UMTS network infrastructure and are expected to save US$700 million apiece through the agreement.

At the end of 2001 there were just over 12 million mobile subscribers in the Netherlands of which 5.2 million were controlled by KPN Mobile, 3.2 million by the Vodafone affiliate Libertel, with the remainder evenly split between Telfort (1.3 million), Ben (1.2 million) and Dutchtone (1.1 million).

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