It’s really quite amazing just how quickly one can put together a consortium to bid for a major operator’s licence when the deadline looms: on Wednesday, British Telecommunications Plc told us firmly that it would definitely be bidding on its own and not in consortium for one of the two to four Telepoint operators’ licences, yet late on Thursday it was sending round to a favoured few publications – not ours, nor, it seems, the Wall Street Journal – the news (see front) that it would be bidding in consortium with its cordless phone manufacturing partner STC Plc, with Nynex Corp of New York, and with an as yet unidentified major continental company; Telecom is expected to have at least 51% of the venture.