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Technology Stocks : Global Crossing - GX (formerly GBLX) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: MileHigh who wrote (4758)	3/7/2000 1:36:00 AM
From: Jeffrey D	Respond to of 15615

ONE.TEL VIES FOR UK MOBILE PHONE LICENCES -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Story Filed: Monday, March 06, 2000 8:14 PM EST LONDON, Mar 07, 2000 (AsiaPulse via COMTEX) -- The Rupert Murdoch-backed junior telco One.Tel yesterday tied with Global Crossing's Crescent at the end of the first round of bidding for licences to run Britain's next generation of mobile phones. Both companies posted STG89,300,000($A233.04 million) as their initial bid for one of the smaller licences and the tie was resolved in Crescent's favour, giving One.Tel a chance to bid in the second round. A total of 13 companies, including Britain's big four of British Telecom, Vodafone, Orange and One2One have joined the bidding race for the five licences on offer. The new "third generation" mobiles use a new technical standard and can offer faster internet access, on-the-move video conferencing and high-quality video images. Other bidders include Richard Branson's Virgin Group, the Japanese finance house Nomura, Spain's Telefonica and a partnership of France Telecom and NTL and the biggest licence is reserved for one of the newcomers. The process is expected to take up to six weeks and the battle is being played out on the Internet with all bids held in public until only five companies are left in the contest. The auction is being held by the Department of Trade and Industry's radio communications agency, with all five licences offered simultaneously in a sale that is expected to raise at least STG500 million ($A1.3 billion) for the British government. After each round, the top bidder holds back to allow its competitors to leapfrog. Canadian telco TIW leads the bidding for licence A, the largest licence which is reserved for new entrants to the market, with a bid of STG170 million ($A443.63 million). Bidding for the second largest licence is led by Orange with a STG107, 400,000 ($A280.27 million) bid. Epsilon tied with One2One for licence E and no bids were entered for licence C. (C) 2000 Asia Pulse Pte Ltd