LISBON, Portugal-Portugal’s Institute for Communications of Portugal awarded four Universal Mobile Telecommunications System licenses.
The license winners are the country’s three incumbent mobile carriers-TMN, owned by Portugal Telecom; Telecel, majority owned by Vodafone Group plc; and Optimus, in which France Telecom has a stake. The fourth winner, and newcomer to the market, is consortium Oni Way, which is 55-percent owned by Portuguese utility Oni SGPS and 20-percent owned by Telenor Mobile Communications.
A statement from Telenor pledged an investment of $161.9 million during the next five years.
The price for each license was set at $89 million. Telenor said Portugal has a mobile penetration of about 55 percent.
Seven companies competed in the tender.
