Bruno Lasserre, director general of France’s Direction de la Regementation Generale, detailed the service licences awarded in recent months. In the area of satellite, recent additions include British Telecom France, Reuter and Alpha Lyracom, and more will leap aboard this month. In mobile communications, calls for tenders are expected this month for radio data transmission, from which two winners will be selected. In paging, tenders are expected in the coming year for company’s wanting to run a Hermes – a pan European radio paging system. In personal communications, the government is about to embark on a public inquiry into the market segment, which is expected to culminate in the decision to grant licences for services such as Global Speciale Mobile – GSM – digital cellular. The total number of licences awarded over the last year to independent network providers was somewhere around 50.
