Hundreds of employees at the Hellenic Telecommunications Organisation, OTE gathered outside the company’s headquarters in Athens and stopped technicians from the two companies that have cellular franchises connecting their transmitters to the OTE network so that the service could be activated, Reuter reports from Athens: the state workers were protesting against a government decision to sell licences to the European consortium Panafon SA and Italy’s STET SpA while barring OTE from developing its own system; the workers were also protesting the planned sale of 35% of OTE’s shares to an international operator which will take over the company’s management, and likely make life much less comfortable.
