Vinci gets rail telecoms project reprieve-sources

* New deadline is Nov. 24 - source

* RFF's move is good sign for Vinci

By Greg Roumeliotis and Michel Rose

AMSTERDAM/PARIS, Oct 15 (Reuters) - French builder Vinci (SGEF.PA) will have more than another month to complete financing for a 1 billion-euro GSM-R rail communications project, two sources said on Thursday.

At a board meeting yesterday, French rail network operator Reseau Ferre de France (RFF) decided Vinci's consortium should be given more time to secure the required bank financing in light of bankrupt supplier Nortel Networks' auction of its GSM business on Nov 9, sources said.

Vinci was asked to close the project by early October, but the new deadline communicated to Vinci by RFF is Nov. 24, one of the sources said.

"In principle yes, it will be this date if the management board meeting (of RFF) takes place that day," a spokeswoman for RFF said when asked about the deadline.

The Vinci consortium, which includes telecoms firm SFR and AXA Investment Managers Paris, won the contract in February but did not sign its contract in June as originally planned, setting back construction which is set to take five years.

Banks were reluctant to lend because of worries over whether Nortel would be a reliable supplier, even though RFF offered to provide relevant guarantees against default, sources said.

RFF has now been told a winner for Nortel's GSM business would emerge on Nov. 10, following an open auction the previous day, the sources said.

A Vinci spokesperson declined to comment.

RFF's latest timeline extension indicates that it has little appetite to scrap Vinci's public-private partnership contract, setting back the project's procurement potentially for several months, the sources said.

GSM-R is RFF's first public-private partnership (PPP) scheme and calls for the construction and operation, under a 15-year contract, of a GSM-R based network on 14,000 km of track, providing links between trains and operational control centres.

The project has won support from the European Investment Bank which is contributing close to 300 million euros, as well as from the Caisse des Depots et Consignations, which has agreed to finance 25 percent.

(Editing by David Cowell)