PAT Need your read on this
I'm trying to determine if there is a connection between AMTX and MFST or if it makes no difference.
Thanks
Ray
SEE BELOW
FOCUS-France Telecom cuts line rates
Reuters Story - December 17, 1996 10:10
FINANCIAL FR TEL FTE MFST COLTY EUTL ETL EAUG BOUY V%REUTER P%RTR
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PARIS, Dec 17 (Reuter) - France Telecom on Tuesday
announced big price cuts on leased lines on the same day the
government published decrees for two more operators of
alternative telecommunication networks.
"The cuts are ahead of the competition, that's clear. But we
also noticed that our previous cut led to a 20 percent increase
in leased capacity," said a France Telecom spokesman.
The state-owned operator, slated for partial privatisation
from April, said it was cutting by 10 percent prices of its
national leased lines and by 15 percent the price of
international digital lines.
It also unveiled a new service, Transfix Metropolitain,
offering a 70 percent reduction for users of 64 kilobit per
second data lines.
"This is not a little business. The 1996 sales on leased
lines was 6.3 billion francs ($1.2 billion) and we have some
300,000 leased lines," the spokesman said.
The French government earlier on Tuesday published decrees
awarding telecommunication infrastructure licences to MFS
Communications Co Inc of the United States and Britain's
Colt Telecom Group Plc .
These licences, ALT3 and ALT4, follow recent similar awards
to Eurotunnel's Transmanche and railroads group
SNCF.
A spokesman for the Ministry of Telecommunications said that
a fifth licence would be awarded soon to Paris public transport
company RATP.
The MFC and Colt licences are for the Ile-de-France area
around Paris.
The licences for so-called alternative infrastructure are
part of the liberalisation of the French, and European, telecoms
sector in 1998.
Alternative infrastructures are telecom networks that
compete with the network of France Telecom and can be used
either by companies that are large users of telecom services or
by future competing operators -- Generale des Eaux's
Cegetel and Bouygues Telecom .
($1=5.224 French Franc) |
