Competition is expected to be fierce for the second cellular license for a Global System for Mobile communications network in Austria. The three cellular systems now serving the nation of 8 million people are operated by the government-owned Austrian Post, Telephone and Telegraph.
Austria became a member of the European Union in January and now must meet the EU’s plan to end government monopolies over telecommunications infrastructure in member nations by Jan. 1, 1998. The European Commission has contemplated moving the deadline up to 1996.
As Austria prepares to tender the license, the government has met with numerous U.S. telecom companies interested in building consortiums for the opportunity. “U.S. firms have had an excellent success rate in becoming players in the European cellular telephone service sector,” according to a statement from U.S. Embassy officials in Vienna.
Licensing conditions were released in April; invitations for discussion will be extended sometime this month. For the discussion, the legal status of the potential applicant isn’t relevant, officials said.
Applicants must have serious intent, demonstrate financial capacity, technical planning, commercial business planning and show “professionalism of the enterprise and its services,” officials said.
A Nordic Mobile Telephone system went on-line in Austria in 1984; it has approximately 46,900 subscribers. The PTT began offering Total Access Communications System service in 1990, and in December had 215,169 subscribers. PTT’s GSM system began commercial service in 1994 and, as of April, had approximately 20,000 subscribers, with 3,000 to 4,000 new applications being submitted each month.
The decision to license a second GSM system is an important step in lifting the monopoly the Austrian PTT has over telecommunication services, officials said.
