The telecommunications regulator Etain Doyle has announced details of the competition to award licences for third generation mobile operators.
Third generation phones will allow users to access the Internet at high speed.
Four 20-year licences will be awarded, with three B licences costing £90m and one A licence costing £40m. The B licences provide for coverage of the five major cities, while the A licence requires 80% population coverage and potentially extra spectrum to carry mobile virtual network operators (MVNO) services.
The process will be conducted through a 'beauty contest', and the highest ranking applicants will be announced in June.
The regulator says licensees should begin to roll out 3G services by January 2004. She says she is keen to encourage site and mast sharing and will look favourably on proposals for infrastructure sharing.
Payments for the licences will be spread over 15 years following an up front payment of £10m for the A licence and £35m for the B licences. A three to five year repayment break will be given with the full licence fee to be repaid over 15 years.
Eircell Vodafone welcomed the start of the 3G licensing process, but said it was concerned about the level of the licence fees, saying that staggered payments would restrict the ability of operators to reduce tariffs in later years.
The company said it appeared that successful bidders were being asked to pay for the delay caused by the dispute between the Government and ODTR.
A spokesman for Digifone said he was 'pleasantly surprised' by the announcement after the weekend media reports, but said the prices were 'at the higher end of what was considered reasonable'. He said the company was keen to share infrastructure on the 3G network, and was already doing so on its GSM network.
A spokesman for Meteor said the prices were still too high, but the company would still consider engaging in the process. He said the deferred payment structure was 'interesting'.
