EUROMAP (MANNESMANN-OLIVETTI) TO ENTER SERVICE DURING FIRST HALF OF 1999.

Olivetti plans to take at least a 20% stake of in Euromap, a joint venture with Germany's Mannesmann group on the creation of a European telecommunications network due to enter service in the first half of 1999. Speaking in Rome on November 12, at a symposium staged to celebrate the 90th anniversary of the Olivetti group, Marco De Benedetti, a Director of Oliman, the Olivetti/Mannesmann joint venture that controls Omnitel, Italy's second mobile telephony operator and the Infostrada fixed telephony service, acknowledged that Euromap will represent a "significant" investment for the Olivetti group. Mannesmann Vice-President Klaus Esser has indicted that total investment in the establishment of Euromap is likely to amount to about DM400 million, and that Mannesmann will...