The full list of bidders for the licence to operate Australia’s third mobile telephone service is now in: according to Reuter, Transport and Communications Minister Bob Collins said that companies to express interest were Pacific Telesis Group, Qualcomm Inc with McCaw Cellular Communications Inc, Hutchison Whampoa Ltd, Nippon Telegraph & Telephone Corp, Matrix Telecommunications Ltd, Singapore Telecom, Telecom Co of New Zealand, and Arena GSM, a British-Australian consortium led by Vodafone Group Plc; the licence will be awarded in December and allow operations from July 1993; the winning bidder will compete with the MobileNet service of the state-owned Australian & Overseas Telecommunications Corp Ltd and the new service run by Optus Communications Pty Ltd; Arena GSM’s Australian equity partners have not been announced but Vodafone says it will hold under 50%.
