There’s no World Cup France, but there are WiMAX licenses. France’s telecom regulatory body, Arcep, announced late last week that it was awarding 35 WiMAX licenses in the 3.4 GHz to 3.6 GHz frequency band.

Among the license winners were France Telecom, Maxtel and Guyatel of French Guyana. Also, six local government authorities received licenses. Adlane Fellah, senior analyst at Maravedis, noted that it’s a new phenomenon in France for such bodies to receive frequency licenses. Fellah also noted that Clearwire France was not listed among the new licensees. Just last week, Bellevue, Wash.-based Clearwire took a significant step toward WiMAX deployment in the U.S. by pulling in a combined $900 million investment from Intel and Motorola and selling its equipment subsidiary to Motorola. Motorola, in turn, is likely to become Clearwire’s chief supplier of WiMAX equipment.

The formal right to use the French frequencies will be granted by the end of this month. The French government indicated it will assess license usage in 18 to 24 months, and that a total of 3500 transmission sites must be deployed by June 2008. The government also will consider licensing the 5.4 GHz to 5.7 GHz band at a later date, according to a statement from Arcep.

The government will collect a total of about $125 million for the licenses, with annual spectrum usage fees expected to amount to $1.6 billion.