OTE outbids Telecom Italia for Bulgarian 3G licence

date: 18th December 2000

OTE, the Greek public telecoms operator, on Sunday won Bulgaria's third mobile phone licence for $135m after outbidding Telecom Italia. The auction was the first of two hotly-contested telecoms deals in the Balkans that are due to conclude this month.

The high price paid for the 15-year GSM licence reflects OTE's ambitions to extend its network across the region.

OTE is also a frontrunner to acquire a majority stake in Maktel, the profitable Macedonian state operator, in the region's biggest privatisation sale this year.

On Friday the Greek operator offered E375m for 51 per cent of Maktel, while a consortium led by Hungary's Matav offered E362.5m. Slovenia Telecom, the other shortlisted bidder, failed to make an offer.

Macedonia's privatisation committee will evaluate the two bids this week, but a final decision will be take by Ljubco Georgievski, the prime minister, officials in Skopje said.

Matav, in which Deutsche Telekom holds a 61 per cent stake, was considered the favourite to acquire Maktel after the Macedonian government made clear it was seeking investment from outside the Balkan region.

Matav has a 51 per cent stake in the consortium bidding for Maktel. The other partners are George Soros, the international financier, and Interamerican, a Greek financial services group.

Nikos Manassis, OTE chief executive, said yesterday the group planned to develop the new mobile network in co-operation with BTC, the Bulgarian fixed-line operator.

He said CosmOTE, the group's mobile subsidiary, was ready to acquire a stake in Mobikom, a Bulgarian analogue mobile phone operator controlled by BTC.

Only 3.9 per cent of Bulgarian residents are mobile subscribers, compared with an average of 10 per cent in the former communist countries of central Europe.

With the acquisition of the Bulgarian mobile licence, OTE is close to achieving its ambition of operating in all the Balkan countries.

The Greek group holds strategic stakes in Rom Telecom, the Romanian state operator, and in state-controlled Telekom Serbia, alongside Telecom Italia. It also controls 90 per cent of AMC, the Albanian mobile operator.

top