PERSONA, one of the unsuccessful consortiums to bid for the GSM mobile phone licence, will today decide whether to lodge a formal complaint to the European Commission in relation to the licence competition process.
It is understood that a member of another of the losing consortiums, the US company Cellstar, intends to write to the Commission outlining its objections to the process, although it may stop short of lodging a full legal objection.
The board of Persona, which comprises Motorola, Sigma Wireless, Unisource and ESB International, is expected to announce whether it will mount a legal challenge against the awarding of the licence to ESAT Digifone around lunchtime today.
Having strongly protested about the awarding of the licence in recent months, industry sources expected the consortium to proceed with a legal action.
The European Commission spokesman for EU Competition Commissioner Mr Karel van Miert has said that it will "conduct a normal scrutiny into the details submitted by a complainant." Mr van Miert moved to clarify media reports about contact between the Commission and the Department of Communications over the issues.
The Irish authorities handling the competition, he said, had "at all times" kept the Commission informed of the details of the planned licensing system.
The spokesman said he had only expressed surprise at a suggestion from a journalist that the Commission had imposed a £15 million cap on the licence fee.
The Commission would not do this, he said, but it had been informed of all the elements of the bid and "considered that we had no grounds to refuse such a system".
The Commission's concern in such cases was that proper competition be encouraged and that the existing operator pay a "comparable financial contribution" to the licence fee.
