France may award a third licence to a national cellular phone operator, French Industry Minister Gerard Longuet told the International Telecommunications Union: the existing two operators are state-owned France Telecom and the Societe Francaise du Radiotelephone SA unit of Cie Generale des Eaux SA: Longuet added that the two existing operators might be able to apply for a licence, under conditions yet to be defined, to offer services on the 1.8GHz band – the one allocated for Personal Communications Network in the UK, which will give greater access to a mass market; he also said that Generale des Eaux would be authorised, on an experimental basis, to run a cordless phone Telepoint network in an area in the Paris region, which would make use of the existing cable network.
