TELSTRA, Australia's state-controlled telecommunications giant, yesterday confirmed that it will join Hutchison Whampoa in a bid for a Hong Kong network costing hundreds of millions of dollars.
However, Telstra regional director Philip Yates said the network would not compete head-on with that of Hongkong Telecom - not offering a service to every home or business in the territory.
The announcement ends months of speculation that Hutchison was seeking to reduce the cost of its bid and just days after Australian Communications Minister David Beddall said he wanted Australia's presence in the region's telecommunications business to expand fivefold by 1997.
Mr Yates said he hoped a formal announcement would be made this week.
Negotiations were continuing on co-operation in other areas, but he would not confirm whether Telstra was interested in taking a stake in the capital-hungry network in Britain, or doing a deal involving Hutchison's highly successful mobile operations in Hong Kong.
Any dilution of Hutchison's involvement in the UK network, in which it has a 65 per cent stake, would be received joyously by analysts worried that its attempt to introduce a personal communications network of hi-tech mini-phones will lose perhaps $1 billion in 1995.
Telstra owns a half share in the Chevalier cordless phone network whose total investment is estimated at $400 million, of which about two-thirds has been spent.