Portugal's Economy Ministry has cancelled the 3G license originally awarded to the now defunct Oniway 3G venture. The Ministry said in a statement that the spectrum was to be split up and allocated to the three remaining 3G license holders, Portugal Telecoms TMN, Vodafone Telecel and Optimus.
The Ministry says that the decision to split up the spectrum was based on requests from the three remaining networks - and doubtless had nothing to do with the difficulty they would have faced in selling the license to another company.
Portugal's Electricidade de Portugal (EDP) owns 56% of Oni, which in turn owns 68% of Oniway, with the remaining shareholders being Telenor (20%) and Iberdrola (8%). The decision to close the network was taken by EDP, but was opposed by Telenor. Oniway's assets have been sold off to the three incumbent networks."
Posted to the site on 21st January 2003
Posted to: www.cellular-news.com/story/8163.php