The French government has reduced the initial price that it is to charge for the two new 3G licenses it is set to establish. The initial fee is now $570 million, followed by annual payments based on the company revenue, resulting in full payment of the original asking price of $4.5 billion. The regulator has stated that it would prefer to award the licenses before the end of the year, rather than waiting until the second quarter of 2002 for a beauty contest.
The license term has also been extended from 15 years to 20 years. These alterations will also be retrospectively applied to Orange and Vivendi who hold the two existing 3G licenses.
The only other proposed alteration on the licensing sales plan is the possibility of allowing infrastructure sharing between the networks.
