The establishment of a pan-European data communications services company – tentatively called MDNS, for the Managed Data Network Services it will offer – got closer to becoming a reality this month, with a meeting of the 22 members of the Conference on European Posts and Telecommunications, CEPT, to set up a structure and timetable of events. According to Padraig Corkery, international chief at Ireland’s Telecom Eireann, the assembled signatories agreed that the selection of the managing director of the new firm would be made from the marketplace in its widest context through a combination of advertising and headhunting although he said no clear favourite had yet emerged. It was also decided that the location of the company would be somewhere on the European mainland and that the decision would be unaffected by the politics of any of the member PTTs. Corkery also said that a temporary board was elected, comprising 11 of the 19 member companies including representatives from the UK and Eire, and that the target date for incorporation of early next year was still realistic. But the commitment of the French, West Germans, Belgians and Spanish to the new company is called into question by their buying stakes in the effectively competing Infonet unit of Computer Sciences Corp.
