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To: Sawtooth who wrote (21322)	1/14/1999 7:44:00 PM
From: straight life	Respond to of 152472

Brazil to sell two "mirror" phone licenses Friday SAO PAULO, Jan 14 (Reuters) - Brazil's government will forge ahead Friday with the sale of two licenses to operate competing telephone networks, officials said Thursday. Two envelopes containing bids, one for each license, will be opened Friday at a privatization auction at the Rio de Janeiro stock exchange scheduled for 1000 local/1200 GMT, exchange officials said. Brazil hopes to eventually sell four ''mirror'' licenses to establish and operate telephone networks to compete with the three regional fixed-line companies and the long-distance carrier that were privatized last July. Analysts said there was no reason to postpone the auction because the closed-envelope proposals, including the prices, were submitted in December, well before Wednesday's currency devaluation, which sent markets into a tailspin. On Friday, Brazil will auction a license to operate a long-distance network that will compete with Embratel . The Bonaire Holding consortium, which includes U.S. long-distance company Sprint Corp. (NYSE:FON - news), France Telecom and Britain's National Grid (quote from Yahoo! UK & Ireland: NGG.L), confirmed it handed in a bid on the long-distance license and will attend the Friday auction. ''The Borari consortium will be there tomorrow and continues as interested as it was before,'' the group's spokesperson said Thursday. Brazil will also sell a license to operate a network to compete with Tele Norte Leste , which serves Rio de Janeiro as well as Brazil's north and northeast. The Cambra consortium, including Bell Canada International (Toronto:BI.TO - news), Qualcomm Inc. (Nasdaq:QCOM - news) do Brasil and Brazil's Vicunha industrial group, will bid on the second license. Analysts said the groups would probably offer close to the ''referential'' prices set by the government, considering they are the only bidders. The long-distance license was set at 40 million reais and the northeastern fixed-line license was set at 60 million reais. The bids were already evaluated for their technical proposals and approved by Anatel telecommunications watchdog agency. Brazil plans to sell two remaining fixed-line ''mirror'' licenses in March. They did not initially attract investor interest.