German Phone Companies May Share Some UMTS Costs, RegTP Says
Bonn, May 28 (Bloomberg) -- Vodafone Group Plc, MobilCom AG and other companies that spent 8.4 billion euros ($7.3 billion) on a new German mobile phone license may be allowed to share some of the costs to build the networks, the regulator said.
The RegTP phone and postal regulator will detail its recommendations, which may include antenna, switching station and server sharing, at a briefing June 5. The proposals will be based on a study the RegTP commissioned from the University of Aachen.
The stakes are high. MobilCom AG, one of the six winners of a mobile phone license last year, has said it may be able to slash costs to build a new network by 40 percent if it's allowed to cooperate with others, such as KPN NV's German E-Plus unit.
``Wide technical cooperation is possible,'' said Harald Doerr, a spokesman for RegTP. He said the regulator will discuss the details at the June briefing at its headquarters in Bonn.
MobilCom, which is backed by France Telecom SA, has been among the main lobbyists for close cooperation because it has to build a new network from scratch. Others, including Vodafone and Deutsche Telekom AG's T-Mobile International AG unit, have urged the regulator to stick to the original auction rules.
``There's a big world of feasible cooperation, stretching beyond simple antenna site cooperation, including sharing switching stations, server sharing and beyond,'' said Marc Werner, who is working on the Aachen University study. ``Then there's the antitrust aspects which we don't address but which the RegTp must decide, not least on the basis of our study.''
Roads to Roam
According to auction rules, each winner has to independently cover 25 percent of the country by 2003 and 50 percent of the country by 2005 with its own network. The regulator has said the companies may cooperate in ``passive'' areas of construction.
``Licensees can reach these quotas quickly by setting up sites in towns and cities,'' said Rudolf Boll, the spokesman for British Telecommunications Plc's Viag Interkom AG. ``There's no rule that says we can't share networks via roaming agreements.''
Juergen von Kuczkowsky, the Chief Executive of Vodafone's D2 Germany unit, is not opposed to the sharing of antenna masts, but sees transmitter sharing as a breach of the rules, he said in an interview with German magazine Focus published today.
05/28/2001 9:09 |
