Before the expiry of the deadline for offering bids for the third operator, noon of 27 September, three bidders sent their applications. Of them, only the company called Tele2 d.o.o. from Zagreb applied for the concession for the second generation of mobile telephony, namely for GSM/DCS 1800. Thus, the council received only one bid for the third mobile operator.
The other two offers were sent from the existing operators -- HTmobile and VIPnet -- which asked for being granted the concession in order to upgrade and strengthen their networks and services, namely for UMTS, or the third generation of mobile telephony on the Croatian market.
The third operator may start operating on a commercial basis next spring, Croatian Transport and Communications State Secretary Drazen Breglec said on Monday.
Although council members today declined to reveal who was the bidder for the third operator, explaining that this was classified business data, reporters managed to learn that the Tele2 company was a Croatian-Swedish consortium called "Treca Sreca", consisting of nine Croatian companies associated with the Swedish telecom operator Tele2.
"Treca Sreca" will hold a news conference on Tuesday to present the offer of the Tele2 company.
The nine Croatian companies in the consortium are Dalekovod, Jamnica, FIMA Holding, the Croatia Osiguranje insurance company, Nexe Group, Konstruktor-Inzenjering, Lura, 'Institut gradjevinarstva Hrvatske' and the Privredna Banka Zagreb (PBZ)