France Telecom Mobiles said last week that, after a slow start, its Itineris Groupe Speciale Mobile digital cellular service now has 120,000 subscribers and that it will increase its GSM network investment by around $200,000 this year. Alain Lenoir, managing director for France Telecom Mobiles Radiotelephone, said the company’s objectives for 1994 are to double the number of subscribers by year-end by selling 2,000 subscriptions per day, and to enhance the network’s functionality. To that end, he said the company plans to add speech messaging in the second half of this year. The function is currently under test and will not be offered commercially until it is completely ready, Lenoir said. We have to be sure it works well because we expect there to be a lot more demand for this function than there was for the call-sendback feature, he said. Next year will be the big year of digital transmission development on the network, he said, with the addition of facsimile and data transmission services. It is expecting to introduce alphanumeric messaging capability in summer, 1995, for example. Asked whether France Telecom wouldn’t lose out to competitors showing GSM data transmission capability at Hannover last week, France Telecom Mobiles president Michel Bertinetto said only that customers in France are obliged to use approved equipment. France Telecom Mobile revenues totalled some $465m, of which Itineris accounted for only between $17m to $34m. Lenoir said the investments required for establishing the Itineris service would prevent it from showing an operating profit before 1996 or 1997, or a net profit before 2000. The principal source of revenue continues to be the analogue service Radiocom 2000. In 1995, Itineris should become the major earner. Right now, we treat Radiocom 2000 as a mature product; our priority is clearly GSM. While we don’t invest enormously in analogue communications, we continue to assure its function and quality, Lenoir said.
