Telefonica Czech Eyes Frequency Auction If Open To It - Report
February 20 2012 - 8:00AM
Dow Jones News
Telefonica Czech Republic (BAATELEC.PR) wants to bid for new
mobile bandwidth to be auctioned later this year, provided the
Czech sector regulator doesn't limit the process to new
operators.
"We think that the auction shouldn't serve as a regulatory
instrument and we really hope that there will the same terms for
all bidders," Chief Financial Officer Petr Kubovy says in an online
interview on business news portal Patria.cz.
Telefonica Czech is majority owned by Spain's Telefonica SA
(TEF).
The regulator, CTU, is scheduled to release the terms of the
frequency bandwidth auction next month and hold the bidding by
September. It has yet to decide whether to limit the auction to new
market entrants in a bid to increase competition in the sector.
Telefonica Czech is one of three companies that currently
operate in the Czech mobile telecoms market. The other two are
Vodafone Group PLC (VOD) and Deutsche Telekom AG's (DTE.XE)
T-Mobile.
The upcoming bandwidth auction is also expected to help speed up
the rollout of new high-speed mobile networks with long-term
evolution technology, the successor to third-generation, or 3G,
mobile data services.
Website: www.patria.cz
-By Leos Rousek, Dow Jones Newswires; +420 222 315 290;
leos.rousek@dowjones.com
Go to http://blogs.wsj.com/emergingeurope for the new WSJ and
Dow Jones blog on Central and Eastern Europe, covering business,
politics, society and more, written by our correspondents across
the region.