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Technology Stocks : Qualcomm Moderated Thread - please read rules before posting -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: foundation who wrote (11100)	5/30/2001 8:31:36 AM
From: foundation	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 196584

Minister repeats U.K. will not refund 3G license fees By Reuters staff 30 May 2001 Chancellor of the Exchequer Gordon Brown on Wednesday again insisted that Britain had been fair in its auction of third-generation mobile licences and would not return money to those who paid billions for them. Asked if the British government would offer rebates to telecommunications firms saddled with heavy debts because of the expense of the licences auctioned last year, Brown told a Labour Party election news conference: "We're not going to change our policy. It was a market-driven exercise. People bid in the normal way for this, and people paid the price they were prepared to offer." The auction last year brought 22.5 billion pounds ($32 billion) into state coffers - well above analysts' forecasts and making a major contribution to the UK's 37 billion pound net cash surplus in the financial year to end-March 2001. Brown said the telecommunications spectrum sold for use by third-generation UMTS (Universal Mobile Telecommunications System) mobile devices was a national resource. "We did the right thing, because this was a national asset. The spectrum was there, and people were prepared to bid for it," he said. The companies which won licences in last year's auction were Vodafone, British Telecommunications, Orange, Deutsche Telekom unit One 2 One, and TIW UMTS, controlled by Hong Kong's Hutchison Whampoa. totaltele.com