Plessey Co Plc and GEC Plc suspended hostilities yesterday long enough to come together to announce formation of a consortium with BellSouth Corp to bid for one of the Personal Communications Network operator licences to be awarded by the UK Department of Trade & Industry before year-end. Nothing with regard to any new GEC Siemens Plc bid can be read into the fact that the two were sharing a platform – from Plessey’s point of view, with its partner in Orbitel Mobile Communications, Racal Electronics Plc, barred from bidding for a licence, it needed a partner that stood a good chance of winning, from GEC’s point of view, if the consortium wins, it gets a minimum of 30% and perhaps 60% of the consortium. The third partner, BellSouth, is to take 20% and is interested – and interesting to the other two – because of its involvement in UK radiopaging through its Air Call Plc acquisition – paging is a subset of the personal communications concept – and for its financial muscle. The remaining 20% is to be offered to other partners with something to bring to the party. Plessey – in partnership with Kingston Communica tions, Hull, was the first to resp ond to the Department request for proposals for Personal Communicati ons Networks (CI No 1,173), and Hull may join the new consortium. These guys should open for England – p4.
