Fifty-one billion euros (about HK$352.2 billion) in Germany; 38 billion euros in Britain and another 20 billion euros to come in France. And that was just the cost of the network licences.
Now the winning consortiums have to find the money to roll out their third-generation (3G) Internet-capable, high-speed mobile-phone networks and provide their content and services. That is going to be an estimated 48.7 billion euros in Germany; 28.9 billion in Britain; 28.8 billion in Italy; 23.1 billion in France; 15.7 billion in Spain and a few billion each in the smaller countries.
Only then can the lucky winners in the great telephone licence scramble start wooing the customers who will, eventually, allow them to start recouping investments. If they are still afloat and solvent by then, that is. And if they can provide whatever it takes to attract those big-spending, high-rolling Internet junkies with habits so insatiable, pockets so deep and egos so gigantic they will pay big bucks to stay online in transit.
Nobody really knows how quickly customers will sign up for 3G or whether the roll-out can be completed as fast or as cheaply as the networks estimate. Nor is it clear how long it will be before the technology is overtaken by something faster and cheaper. Already, wireless local area networks (WLANs), which can be developed licence-free over small areas, are growing fast in closely networked communities such as universities and are often touted as a potential threat to 3G.
The markets seem to have woken up to all this at last. The love affair with new technology in general and telecommunications in particular has ended.
British Telecom's share price, for example, plummeted from a year's high of 1,520p to a low of 586p, although it has crept back up to 641.75p. Deutsche Telekom, another former state monopoly now being privatised, has slipped from 104 euros to 37.3 euros, while Vodafone, possibly the strongest player in the European market, has fallen from 404p to 267.25p a share.
At the weakest end of the market, Germany's MobilCom has continued its free-fall even as some of the bigger players picked up. At the end of last week it fell to a new low of 33.51 euros a share, despite assurances that it had finally secured funds for its 3G project.
