Swiss call halt to auction

date: 13 November 2000

News from Switzerland's Federal Communications Commission (SFCC) is that the Swiss auction due to start Monday 13 November, has been postponed. The reason is that over the weekend Tele Danmark agreed to increase its share in Sunrise from 44 per cent to 89 per cent, purchased from BT, and Tele Danmark also agreed to buy 70 per cent of diAx.

Just last week, the licences were expected to be sold for between EUR1.2 - 2.6bn, but now the situation has changed completely. The new consolidation deal means that instead of the eight bidders reported by 3G Bulletin last week, there are now four. The auction is to allocate only four licenses. Fulvio Caccia, president of the SFCC, expected that one or two of last week's eight bidders would leave the auction before it commenced, but hoped the current situation would not occur.

It was thought earlier today that the government would start the auction with just four bidders and award licenses at the set minimum price of EUR32m each. Protests from various trade unions and political parties forced the SFCC to change their minds. The SFCC will investigate various options and determine if any companies acted illegally and conspired before the auction. So, yet again, another auction has been cancelled, the regulator suspects unfair play, and once again BT has been involved.

Telenor, NTL subsidiary Cablecom, Deutsche Telekom's T-Mobil and Hutchison all withdrew from the auction last week. The companies left in the running are: Team 3G, wholly owned by Telefonica Swisscom Mobile, DSpeed, sister company of diAx. Orange Communications

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