Vodafone Group Plc has decided to try to make Australia a major area of foreign activity and announced yesterday that it will bid for the third mobile telephone licence, with a commitment to invest some UKP220m over seven years to est-ablish an Australian digital cellular network, creating 5,000 jobs in the process. The company will lead a consortium to be called Arena GSM, with as yet unnamed local partners, which will together hold about 55%. Arena will use Vodafone’s technology to take on the two existing operators, the government-owned Australian & Overseas Telecommunnications Corp and Optus Communications Pty Ltd, in which Cable & Wireless Plc and BellSouth Corp each have 24.5%. Vodafone is now finalising details of the Arena GSM structure with its Australian partners.
