Shifting the goalposts
By : Roseanne Gerin
The presidents of Poland's three mobile-phone companies issued a jointly signed letter of protest to Communications Minister Tomasz Szyszko last Friday, condemning a change in the terms of the third-generation tender put forth by the ministry only two days before the deadline for bids.
The ministry issued a statement on Nov. 30 stating that if less than five universal mobile telecommunication system (UMTS) licenses were awarded, extra blocks of unused frequency would be distributed among the winners. If only four licenses were awarded, the winners would each receive an extra 10 megahertz of frequency, the ministry said.
In their letter, the mobile operators argued that since the new condition was not included in the original documentation that all prospective bidders were required to purchase in early October, the ministry should issue a new document and give the potential participants another 30 days to recalculate their offers. Furthermore, they said that the issuance of the statement only 48 hours before the Dec. 2 deadline for the bids affected their decisions to participate in the tender.
The letter was signed by Wladyslaw Bartoszewicz, Pawel Rzepka and Boguslaw Kulakowski, the presidents of Polkomtel, Telekomunikacja Polska (TPSA) on behalf of PTK Centertel, and Polska Telefonia Cyfrowa (PTC), respectively.
No bids had been placed by any consortia as of 3 p.m. Friday, according to Przemyslaw Sypniewski, an adviser to Szyszko. He said that the ministry expected all the bids to be placed on Dec. 2 so that winners could be selected before the end of the year.
The ministry said it would sell five third-generation licenses for E650 million each. Prospective tender participants, especially Poland's three mobile phone operators, have criticized the tender's conditions and the price of the licenses, and have also threatened to boycott the tender.
Robert Niczewski, the spokesman for PTC, said that the three mobile operators would not participate in the tender if there were no bidders at all. PTC would make its final decision on the Dec. 2 deadline, he said. In the meantime, PTC's lawyers were examining whether the company should call for moving the deadline for bids forward 30 days. But Poland's new telecommunication law, which goes into effect Jan. 1, 2001, places a year-long ban on the awarding of new telecom licenses, so the tender would have to be completed this year unless the ministry, and the operators, are ready to wait another year.
"The ministry is now in a situation where there is a fear that there may be less than five licenses (awarded)," Niczewski said. "It may be a move made by the ministry to avoid the cancellation (of the tender) because it does not have five interested parties."
But Sypniewski said the ministry issued the statement in response to the numerous questions on the matter that Szyszko's office received. He said that the issue was worth clarifying again at the last moment.
