France’s Compagnie Generale des Eaux SA is one of the winners of telephone franchises in Hungary and will operate services in two regions: it plans to invest $120.9m in the telephone systems of Szeged and Szentes; the regions now have 64,000 telephone users out of a 440,000 population; Hungary is now contracting out operation of 25 regional telephone systems, after the privatisation of Matav, former state telecommunications company.
