The German government has responded to loud noises that it was dragging its heels over telecommunications liberalization by awarding three licenses for alternative infrastructure networks that can be used for everything except straight telephony. A fourth should be awarded shortly. One license goes to Vebacom GmbH, to operate a national transmission network for public communications. Two regional licenses for similar networks were awarded to NetCologne GmbH, a consortium of municipal companies, covering the Cologne administrative district, and to the Colt Telecom GmbH subsidiary of the Fidelity Investments Ltd-owned operator, but that is only for a Metropolitan Area Network for the city of Hamburg. The fourth license is expected to be aw arded to the alliance of Viag AG and British Telecommunications Plc, after they emerged as the only applicants to submit a bid by Tuesday’s deadline, the Financial Times reported: AT&T Corp and Stet SpA were believed to be the only other companies to have considered submitting applications, but AT&T said it had not bid because it had been unable to find a strong German partner and its hopes of an alliance with the Debis service subsidiary of Daimler-Benz AG, had come to nothing; Stet was sai d not to have pursued its initial interest, in part because of the second stage of its privatization next spring. The ministry insisted that with the award of the licenses Germany had now fulfilled the conditions set by the European Commission in June when it approved a new rate structure for Deutsche Telekom that is due to take effect in November. The new licenses allow its competitors to carry communications services in areas already open to competition such as mobile communications and in-company leased-line networks.