Cellnet Mobile Communications Ltd yesterday launched its Groupe Speciale Mobile digital cellular network, aimed it squarely at business users, baptised it Primetime Plus and claimed 90% coverage of the UK population at the off. Vodafone Group Plc launched its rival digital network last September. We’ll have two networks working side by side, Cellnet managing director Bob Warner declared. They’ll soon both cover 98% of the UK population. The company, 60% owned by British Telecommunications Plc, 40% by Securicor Group Plc, notes that the launch comes some 10 years after it opened its first analogue system. The Primetime Plus network represents investment of ?300m – all financed from cash flow with no need for any borrowing – and will bring the company’s total investment in UK cellular telephony to ?1,000m once complete. It will cost ?250m to achieve 98% coverage, and the rest will be spent on deepening the cover. Another ?25m is to be invested in the analogue network. Digital cover should rise to 95% by September with 98% cover by the end of the year. We must hold the record for the fastest GSM network in the world, we’re installing two to three base stations a day, the company said. Details of the tariffs were not available but the company does intend to charge a premium.
