France May Allow 3G Infrastructure Sharing

The French newspaper, La Tribune has reported that France's telecoms regulator, the L'Autorite de Regulation des Telecommunications (ART) is in talks to allow 3G infrastructure sharing. Without naming sources, the paper said that the regulator has already had discussions with the interested parties but no formal talks have yet occurred, nor did it say which companies the regulator has spoken to. This could be a move to make the licenses more appealing as the regulator was only able to sell two of the available four licenses earlier this year. There are plans to offer the remaining two licenses next year, and any amendment to the license conditions will be retrospectively applied to the two existing license holder, SFR and Orange."

Posted to the site on 10th September 2001