Belgian Telecoms Min: 3G Licenses To Be Alloted In April

date: 13th December 2000

Belgium will allot its third generation mobile telephone licenses in April, Telecoms Minister Rik Daems told journalists Tuesday.

He said that if everything goes according to plan, bidding for Belgium's four licenses will start six weeks after the publication of regulatory framework legislation in January.

Each 3G mobile telecom operator will get 25% of the available bandwidth, said Daems, and if only three companies bid to set up a 3G mobile network, the remaining quarter of bandwidth won't be allocated.

The remaining portion would be left free until another interested party comes along in the future, he said.

Belgium will be one of the last countries in Europe to auction 3G-licenses for mobile telephony and this fact has caused some consternation.

Since most recent auctions haven't matched the success of the earlier auctions, many fear the Belgian auction might flop, especially since agreements between license holders and third parties aren't forbidden.

Although the three companies with Belgian GSM licenses - Belgacom (B.BCM) unit Proximus, France Telecom's (FTE) Mobistar NV (B.MSR) and KPN Orange Belgium NV -are expected to bid for licenses, it's not clear which other companies might join the bidding.

Part of the revenue raised through the auction will be used to set up an ambitious e-government project, but failure to raise the expected EUR1 billion to EUR1.5 billion, won't jeopardize that project, said Daems. Simply, "less money would be reinvested."

Daems said "a transparent procedure, with the market deciding, is more important than the result of the auction."

The minimum price for a license has been set at EUR150 million.

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