Telcel (a CDMA operator owned by BLS) has won WLL auctions in Venezuela....
public.wsj.com
BellSouth's Unit Wins License
For Wireless-Phone in Venezuela
Dow Jones Newswires
CARACAS, Venezuela -- Bellsouth Corp.'s Venezuelan Telcel C.A. subsidiary won at a license auction Monday the right to provide wireless local loop-based telephone services in four out of the country's five regions.
Telcel has spent a total $5.8 million on the four licenses and continues to fight Spain's Netsat Telecommunications for the fifth region for which bidding ended at $6.8 million Monday. That auction is slated to continue Tuesday as are those for ten more licenses -- two more each for the five regions.
License holders will compete for the basic telephony market that CA Nacional Telefonos de Venezuela SA, or CANTV, had a monopoly on until Nov. 27.
Like Telcel, Genesis Telecom will bid for all five regions. Genesis is owned by the new alliance between Bell Canada , Telefonos Mexico SBC Communications Inc.
Others bidding for all the regions are Telecom Italia Corp's Digitel S.A. unit, Millicom International Cellular SA and Telecommunications Newcom.
Infonet Services Corp. and Procedatos, state electricity provider Enelven's telecommunications arm, will each bid for two regions and locally-owned Digicel CA, for one.
Chile's long-distance-service provider Entel and Net Sat will also each bid on one region.
Netsat's Managing Director, Giordani Massarelli, said Friday that his company wants to begin with only the third region, which has the highest population density, and may expand in the future. The company plans to invest $500 million in Venezuela over the next 18 months, he said.
The auction, which began last Tuesday, could take anywhere from five to sixty business days, according to the National Telecommunications Council, or Conatel. |
