Romania has four 3G service providers

Telecommunications
ROMANIA HAS
four 3G service providers
Year 2006 was a very important one for the telecommunication market in Romania, as all the four 3G licenses
were assigned to the service providers.
The development of the 3G networks began in Romania in
2004, when IGCTI (General Inspectorate for Communications and
Information Technology) - the main authority in the radio frequency spectrum usage, reserved four licenses for 3G networks.
In August 2004, MCTI (The Ministry of Communication and
Information Technology) organized an auction for the 3G licenses.
Due to financial restrictions imposed to the contestants (minimum
300 million euros renues in telecommunication market) and the
required amount of investments, only two companies announced
their participation: Connex-Mobifon (now Vodafone) and Orange.
The two operators officially received their licenses in April
2005. Vodafone launched the 3G services on 25th of April, in 8
major cities: Bucharest, Cluj, Timisoara, Brasov, Iasi, Constanta,
Craiova and Ploiesti. Orange followed in June 2006. The new
services were very appealing to the customers, Orange having
almost 30 000 registered users in only three days.
„The record number of customers shows a very good adoption
rate and that means that the users understood the benefits of this
new technology“, said Richard Moat, CEO Orange Romania. 3G
offers better communication services, live sound and images, live
television, music, multimedia messages, e-mail and Internet connection. By the end of 2006, Vodafone and Orange estimated
around 250,000 3G and EDGE users, each.
In June 2006, IGCTI announced the new requirements for the
other two 3G licenses. The financial restrictions were eliminated,
in order to allow more companies to participate at the auction.
The price for one license remained the same: 35 million dollars,
payable in 6 rates. First one was of 10.5 millions and had to be
paid in 120 days after the announcement of the winners.
The licenses are reserved for 15 years and it is possible to
extend this period with 10 years more. Each service provider
must offer 3G services to at least 45% of the population by 2011
and have electronic communications systems compatible with the
International Telecommunication Union or the European Postal
and Telecommunication Conference emission specifications.
Catalin Marinescu, president of IGCTI, said that „the new
requirements stimulate the new comers, so that the gap between
them and the older service providers will be eliminated as soon
as possible“.
This time more companies were interested of the four licenses:
SC Telemobil SA, SC RCS & RDS SA, Cosmote Mobile
Telecommunications SA and „Societatea Nationala de
Radiocomunicatii Radiocom SA“. The evaluation consisted of
two phases. First the evaluation comitee studied the companies
documents and then the offers were evaluated, taking into
consideration the scoring board.
On October the 13th, 2006, SC RCS & RDS SA and SC
Telemobil SA were declared winners, with 90.41 and 72.71 points.
Next, Cosmote scored 59.74 points and SNR 49.58.
In January, the two companies paid the first 10.5 milion dollars
for the license. „They are forced to offer 3G services to customers
by the end of February. This will increase the competition on the
telecommunication market and so the customers will receive better services“, said Marinescu.
Piermario Di Pietro, CEO of Telemobil
said: „The licence award marked the
beginning of our 3G business in
Romania. Being the first mobile operator
in Romania to be launched mobile broadband services, having a great network
quality and riding on our competitive
edge in technical and service innovations
we are fully committed to constructing the
next generation network“.
The expansion of 3G services will offer acces to high speed
Internet connnection, e-mail, video streaming to more users, and
follow the global trend. As the sales of 3G compatible telephones
rise, it is a good bussines oportunity both for the service and the
content providers. Competiton on the market offers more options
to the clients and ensures that the best services are available.
RCD&RDS
launched it’s first
3G service
based on an
UMTS network
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