Colombian Telecom Plans $47 Million Expansion

BOGOTA, Colombia, March 7 -- Colombia's second-largest telecommunications firm, Empresa de Telecomunicaciones de Bogota (ETB), will invest $47.1 million in 2002 to install fixed lines beyond the nation's capital and will possibly expand abroad, ETB's president said.

"We hope to be telephone operators in other parts of the country, and eventually we could enter the market in Ecuador," Paulo Orozco told a news conference in Bogota.

ETB, which is owned by Bogota's local government, posted net profits of $111.4 million in 2001. Orozco said the company plans to sell an unspecified percentage of shares to the public in the first eight months of 2002.

"We are thinking of selling a minimum of $52.1 million in shares," Orozco said.