Orange flogs Swedish 3G licence

Orange has found a couple of buyers for its Swedish 3G licence. They are TeliaSonera and Tele2, which are paying the enormous sum of Kr50m ($6.9m).

Actually, this is not bad, considering that Orange publicly announced its intention to withdraw from the crowded Swedish market in the summer. Also, its licence was not purchased at enormous cost - Sweden chose to impose tough roll-out targets instead of milking the licence holders dry. So there shouldn't be huge write-offs associated with the disposal.

TeliaSonera and Tele2 currently hold one licence between them. TeliaSonera (or rather Telia, as it was) is Sweden's historical public telephone company. So it was a great surprise when it failed to win a 3G license first time around - the winners were Tele2, Vodafone, Hi3G and Orange.

That's why it teamed up with Tele2. It will stay teamed up with Tele2, post-Orange licence and estimates that it will incur additional roll-out costs of SKr200m because of the acquisition. But they say this will help them save costs in the long run as they will have to spend less on infrastructure as 3G customers ramp up. ®