The E-Plus consortium says it plans to launch Germany’s second private cellular telephone service in Berlin in May: We will offer inexpensive and user-friendly calling charges, and I want to underline the plural, the company says; the consortium consists of Thyssen AG, Veba AG, BellSouth Enterprises Inc, Vodafone Group Plc and several east German companies, and is currently building 700 base stations and plans a total of 6,000 by the end of 1997 when the service should be available to 98% of the population; E-Plus will also offer mobile facsimile and data transfer services, answering machine services and electronic mail boxes for short messages; it invested $413m last year and plans outlay of $590m this; total investment to end-1997 is expected to reach $2,360m; the company currently has 800 employees and says it expects to increase its total workforce to around 2,000.
