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

To: Dennis Roth who wrote (19934)	3/7/2002 2:59:52 PM
From: Dennis Roth	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 196654

France Recommends Lower 3G Fees bwcs.com (05/03/2002, BWCS Staff) The French government is recommending that other EU governments should follow its example and reduce the cost of their 3G licences to help boost the development of next-generation services. The French authorities slashed the price of their four UMTS licences last year from 4.95 billion to 619 million following complaints from operators that the concessions were overpriced; operators will now have to pay an annual percentage of their 3G revenues rather than a large up-front charge. The French regulator ART has also agreed to some infrastructure sharing among 3G operators in order to reduce their rollout costs. The French government, however, was forced to lower its licence fees after finding itself in the unusual position of failing to sell two of its four 3G concessions in its original 3G auction in January last year; only France Telecom s Orange unit and the Vivendi/Vodafone-backed operator SFR entered the spectrum auction. The government is now hoping to sell the remaining two licences later this year, with companies such as Telefonica, Bouygues and Deutsche Telekom all having expressed an interest in bidding this time round. France is currently home to around 36 million mobile subscribers, with Orange leading the market with more than 17.2 million customers at the end of 2001.