around Europe's financial centers. But some patchwork deals to share 3G costs have already been sewn up. Earlier this month, French industry minister Christian Pierret said her government would encourage the successful 3G bidders to share the costs of building the infrastructure to support 3G services. German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder has also expressed his support for companies to share each other's wireless networks "as long as it doesn't harm competition."
German telecoms E-Plus and MobilCom already have struck a deal; another is in the works between German license winner Group 3G and BT's German unit, Viag Interkom.
Recently, Europe's wireless operators have turned to gearmakers for help. In April alone, Hutchison secured $1.1 billion of vendor financing from NEC, Nokia and Siemens; Orange cut a deal with Alcatel, Ericsson and Nokia worth $1.8 billion.
The telecoms are hoping for more deals, mirroring traditional industries such as aerospace that have been using vendor financing for years. But predicting the cash flow from 3G services is far more precarious than forecasting revenue from a commercial airline. At least with airlines, you know the planes can get off the ground. 3G has yet to prove that.
Kristi Essick in Paris and Boris Grondahl in Berlin contributed to this report.
