A consortium led by BellSouth Corp has expanded cellular phone service to Panama’s second largest city, Colon, on the Atlantic coast 50 miles from Panama City. The company is working on establishing roaming with the US and Venezuela by the end of the year or early in 1997, to enable customers to use their cellular phones purchased in Panama in those countries. The consortium, BSC de Panama SA, won the license to build and operate Panama’s first cellular telephone network in January with a bid of $72.6m. BellSouth has the largest stake in BSC with 41.5%; other investors are Panama’s Multi Holding Corp, a holding company of Grupo Bancomer de Panama and Guatemala’s Grupo Botran. The consortium won a 20-year license to operate Band A, one of two nationwide cellular bands; the other will be operated by state-run telephone company Intel, undergoing partial privatization.