PARIS (WiMAX Day). Two months have passed since the auction of 3.5 GHz spectrum in France that netted €125 million. Although precious few announcements have been made by the license bidders concerning their plans to develop the spectrum for WiMAX, Bolloré Telecom appears to be the most active in implementing their strategy in the short-term, and is rumoured to be exploring the conversion of related Wi-Fi networks to WiMAX.

Bolloré Telecom was among the largest recipients of spectrum in the auction. The company is a subsidiary of industrialist Group Bolloré which previously had no telecom expertise. Bolloré, with its partner Hub Telecom, acquired 12 regional licenses in France for the sum of €78 million.

Immediately following its bid for WiMAX spectrum, Bolloré purchased 45% of Wifirst, the leading Wi-Fi provider in France.

Wifirst provides an estimated 14 million minutes of Wi-FI access per month. According to the French financial paper Les Echoes, Bolloré may intend to convert Wifirst Wi-Fi customers to WiMAX in early 2007. Marc Taieb, general director of Wifirst, was quoted in Les Echoes last week saying that their Wi-Fi network “is completely compatible with WiMAX and could thus be used by Bolloré Télécom.”

Hub Telecom, the partner of Bolloré in the spectrum bid, also manages a network of Wi-Fi hotspots in airports, hotels and conference centres, and is part of the Aéroports de Paris group. Hub Telecom last week announced that its Wi-Fi network is now accessible to the network of Orange in France, which counts some 20 million minutes per month of Wi-Fi use.

Hub Telecom began testing the deployment of a WiMAX network with Alcatel at the Paris Charles de Gaulle airport in January 2006. Since 15 Mhz of spectrum was awarded to Bolloré around the airport in July, Hub now has an active WiMAX network at the airport with a reach of 15 kilometres. The network is presently used to monitor weather and security, and Hub intends to offer the WiMAX service to customers “as soon as feasible,” according to a spokeman for the company.