Italians may not bid for UMTS license
The Communications Ministry is expected to announce Thursday which European operators have confirmed their participation in Poland's third-generation mobile phone license tender, a ministry official said Friday.
Przemyslaw Sypniewski, an adviser to Communications Minister Tomasz Szyszko, who went on the road last week to persuade big telecom companies to place bids, said the minister stopped in only four capitals instead of the six cities that ministry officials originally said he would visit. He said that Szyszko traveled to Helsinki, Stockholm, Paris and Madrid to convince prospective European telecom companies to participate in Poland's universal mobile telecommunications system (UMTS) tender that will be formally announced on Oct. 2.
Sypniewski declined to name the operators Szyszko visited. However, two weeks ago ministry officials one of whom was Sypniewski said that the minister planned to visit Finnish operator Sonera, Swedish telecom Telia, French conglomerate Vivendi, Spanish telecom giant Telefonica and Italian operator Telecom Italia in Rome as well as the Norwegian phone company Telenor in Oslo.
Last Friday, Sypniewski said he had not talked to Szyszko since the minister had just returned from his trip Thursday evening, but that he was "80% sure" that the minister did not stop in Rome to talk with officials at Telecom Italia as originally expected.
Vincenzo Ciccarelli, the managing director of Politel, a Warsaw-based data communications service provider partly owned by Telecom Italia, said that officials at the Italian operator confirmed Szyszko eliminated it from his itinerary. He also said the Italians indicated they would be unlikely to participate in the tender, but that they were going to wait until the request for bids to see if the ministry would change the final set of requirements. Telecom Italia was "quite negative today to go ahead with such a decision" to participate in the Polish tender, Ciccarelli said.
Amid heavy criticism from the three Polish mobile phone operators about the high price of the licenses and the excessive number to be awarded, Szyszko indicated previously that the ministry might change the terms of the tender before the bidding process started. The ministry plans to sell five UMTS licenses for a minimum price of E750 million each.
Like the Polish mobile phone operators, Telecom Italia also has concerns about the price and the number of licenses being awarded, Ciccarelli said. He said the Italians indicated that Poland could support only four UMTS.
