Hutchison Extends 3G Tentacles Into Sweden

date: 16th December 2000

Hong Kong-based conglomerate Hutchison Whampoa added Sweden to its European third-generation mobile phone network license portfolio on Saturday, winning one of four Swedish UMTS licenses on offer.

Hutchison has earlier bid successfully for UMTS (Universal Mobile Telecommunications System) licenses in Britain, Austria and Italy.

In Sweden the multinational group teamed up with Investor AB , Sweden's largest holding company controlled by the influential Wallenberg family, to form a 60-40 owned consortium called Hi3G Access AB.

The Swedish Post and Telecom Authority which awarded the licenses said Hi3G Access had pledged $3.58 billion, the highest amount of all the 10 consortia that applied for licenses, to build its UMTS network in Sweden.

``We believe that in reality it will be cheaper than that through cooperation on roll-out with other license winners,'' Hi3G Access spokesman Pontus Ekman told a news conference, referring to operators' plans to build partly shared networks.

Tele2, another winner of a Swedish license, committed itself to a 25.6 billion crown UMTS budget, according to the PTS, but said on Saturday it now expected to spend over 11 billion crowns.

``The challenge now is to build the network and to reach the Swedish population with those services that the new technology makes possible,'' Hi3G Access Chairman Bjorn Svedberg said in a statement.

UMTS will give mobile phone users access to Internet services.

Hi3G Access said the Swedish market was advanced and strategically important and the company planned to establish its European center for developing third generation mobile communication services in Sweden.

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