29 September 2000
The new application procedure for the radio local loop for the Auvergne, Corsica, Franche-Comté, Limousin and Guyana regions, announced by ART this past July, was launched today.
Notification of the application procedure was published in the Journal officiel by the Secretary of State to Industry, in accordance with the proposal made by ART adopted by decision no. 00-947 dated 15 September 2000.
- Complementing the measures already in place
The purpose of this new procedure is to allocate authorisations which were not assigned following the previous application procedure launched on 30 November 1999, because three of the chosen candidates turned down their licenses.
During the previous application procedure, ART selected two operators to cover the entire metropolitan territories, as well as two additional operators in each of the 22 metropolitan regions and two in each of the four overseas départements. Following the procedure, it published the results and report on 11 July.
Today, despite the fact that three companies chosen for the Auvergne, Corsica, Franche-Comté, Limousin and Guyana regions pulled out of the running, the remainder of the legal framework has been put in place, with authorisations having been delivered by the Secretary of State to Industry and frequencies allocated by ART this past summer.
Thus, 18 regions will soon be receiving the services of four radio local loop operators, and two regions Limousin and Franche-Comté those of three operators. Auvergne and Corsica will be covered by the authorisations delivered to the two candidates chosen for coverage of the entire country.
The application procedure launched today should make it possible to assign the remaining authorisations. It involves two licenses for the Corsica and Auvergne regions, one license for Franche-Comté and Limousin, and one licence for Guyana.
- A tight schedule for rapid deployment of new operators
This application procedure will be run in the same way as previous procedures.
Applications will be examined within a relatively short period: the deadline for application submission to ART has been set at 15 November 2000 at noon and the results will be published by ART by 30 January 2001 at the latest.
This tight schedule will mean that radio local loops will be deployed rapidly in the regions concerned since the candidates will be required to deploy their networks and be prepared to provide services within the same deadlines as for the previous procedures.
- Regional development at the heart of the matter
With the new procedure, ART continues to emphasize the importance of regional development, since the leading selection criteria continue to be the depth and speed of deployment of the radio local loop as well as the high-speed service offering. Finally, the chosen candidates will be subject to the same deployment obligations as are stipulated in the selection procedures.
