STOCKHOLM, Sweden-Vodafone Group’s Swedish subsidiary Europolitan will not meet regulator deadlines for building a third-generation (3G) network.
Europolitan Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Jon Risfelt said that reaching the Swedish national telecom regulator PTS’ goal of coverage for 99.9 percent of the population by year-end 2003 was “highly unlikely,” citing difficulties gaining building permits and military clearance as two key problems.
Risfelt has other concerns with 3G services, an obvious one being the lack of phones. “Why should we activate our base stations if there aren’t any phones on the market?” he said
Europolitan will instead concentrate on expanding its existing GSM services and plans a launch of its multimedia messaging services (MMS) later this year.
Europolitan thus joins the chorus of regional operators claiming existing regulatory demands are unrealistic. Last week Sweden’s Tele2 threatened to surrender its Norwegian 3G license unless deadlines are dropped, and Orange recently applied for permission from Swedish authorities to postpone development of its 3G network until 2006.
