Posted: 06th May, 2003 By: MarkJ
Surprise, there appear to be growing concerns about the governments auction of 3.4GHz broadband wireless spectrum licenses. There don't appear to be any big names in the list of 26 participating companies, yet that's not all:
The terms and conditions of the auction mean that successful bidders will not actually have to roll out services. "Only two of them look capable of generating active services," said Michael Philpott, senior analyst at market watcher Ovum.
Investigations by vnunet.com show that 15 of the applicants all share the same address, that of company formation agent Jordans.
These 15 firms were all set up between 24 and 31 March 2003. Several of the other bidders do not even have websites.The
VNUNet reminds us that BTs own chief executive, Pierre Danon, has already gone on record as calling the whole thing "
stupid". BT will not be participating =).
However, the Radiocommunications Agency (RA) does appear to be running background checks on all the companies involved, yet overall appears unconcerned.