Although France Telecom’s Itineris Groupe Speciale Mobile phone service is still in its first six-month pilot phase, the operator has concluded a roaming agreement with Swiss PTT Telecom and a sales distribution agreement with Medes Communication SA, a joint venture between Daimler-Benz AG’s subsidiary Debis GmbH and the Swiss computer distributor Metro AG. The roaming agreement, which the operator says is the first of several to be signed this year, already enables Swiss users to call into the region of France that extends from south of Auxerre in northern Burgundy to Marseille and Nice. French Itineris users will not be able to call into Switzerland until July, when the operator makes its Option Europe available with GSM subscriptions. At that time, according to a France Telecom spokeswoman, Itineris users will have access to the entirety of the Swiss GSM network that will be operational. France Telecom says its Itineris network, which now counts some 3,500 subscribers, presently covers the axis between Lille Paris Lyon Marseille Nice. By the end of the year, it should cover other major cities, including Nantes, Bordeaux and Strasbourg. Victoria Hernandez, telecommunications analyst for InfoCorp Europe, Paris, said the French and Swiss operators had been discussing the agreement for some time, trying to iron out the administrative problems involved. For instance, she noted, a GSM subscription in Switzerland costs approximately half that of one in France. She added that France Telecom wanted the Swiss PTT to pay a fee for the use of the French GSM network. By mid-1993, France Telecom says it expects to have signed other roaming agreements with Germany, Italy, the Scandinavian nations, and the UK. France Telecom says the Europe Option will give French users access to all of the other countries with which it has signed roaming agreements. A spokeswoman said she had no information on the price for the Europe option. At the end of this month, the operator plans to launch a major sales campaign and to open several Itineris sales locations. The agreement with Medes is part of that sales effort. Medes, which is held 56% by Debis and 44% by the German-Swiss Metro, has 125 French sales outlets and did $182m of business in France in 1992. France Telecom says Metro is the world’s second largest distributor of information systems, with revenues of over $4,500m. Medes claims to be the fourth-largest seller of GSM equipment in Germany.
