Belgacom S.A. and Tele Danmark announced they have expanded their BruCop B.V. joint venture to build a Global System for Mobile communications network at 1800 MHz in the Netherlands.
The company paid $300 million for six licenses totaling 16.6 megahertz. The licenses are effective for 15 years. Tele Danmark acquired four licenses at an auction in February and a consortium made up of Orange plc and Veba picked up another two. After receiving regulatory approval from the Dutch government, BruCop was allowed to buy those six licenses.
Tele Danmark owns 16.5 percent of Belgacom. Ameritech Corp. also is a significant shareholder in Belgacom and Tele Danmark. According to the companies, Ameritech wireless communications specialists will aid the Dutch company in establishing the network.
The two parent companies will control the venture, but plan to seek additional investors in the future, they said.
The new network will compete with two existing analog networks in the Netherlands, run by KMB and Libertel, as well as two GSM 900 MHz operators. The country now has some 1.7 million mobile phone subscribers and a penetration rate of 11 percent.
Tele Danmark has other telecom interests in the Netherlands as well. The country is part of its RIOJA transmission project, which seeks to use submarine cable and radio links to connect the Netherlands, Belgium, the United Kingdom and Spain together and to Tele Danmark’s telecom infrastructure.
