ANCOM president Catalin Marinescu told ZF on Tuesday evening that the communications regulatory authority would change the tender documentation for the largest radio spectrum auction in Romania so that Orange and Vodafone are not forced to buy either more or less spectrum than they are currently using for the January 2013 – April 2014 period.
Orange, Vodafone and consultants involved in the case have said in the past few weeks that the initial variant of the tender documents put together by the regulatory authority would have forced the two operators to waste tens of millions of euros to install hundreds of new antennas just to keep the current standard of services.
“Following an extensive analysis and several rounds of consultation with the industry, the terms of the auction will allow one or both operators – Orange and Vodafone, to get the entire spectrum they currently hold,” said Marinescu.
“The licenses of Orange and Vodafone expired in 2011 and were extended by ANCOM for another year. The normal, correct and transparent way for the industry and for competition would have been for the spectrum to be auctioned off back in 2010-2011 at the latest, so we think this process has been excessively delayed, anyway, not taking into account the best interest of the end users. We believe the end user is served through market competition,” Popoviciu said.
Popoviciu: Orange and Vodafone knew back in 1996 when their licenses would expire. Why are they complaining now?
“We don’t understand why these companies are saying now it would take years and certain amounts of money, since they knew, back when the licenses were issued, 15 years ago, what their validity would be,” Popoviciu says. According to him, at least one of the two operators released spectrum in the 900-MHz band for its own needs within a few months, not years.
“We don’t understand why these operators should now be favored over other companies, why the terms of the auction would allow them to obtain the full amount of spectrum they currently hold. These companies also hold spectrum in the 1.8-Ghz and 2.1-Ghz bands,” Popoviciu said.
He once again criticized ANCOM for failing to solve the company’s request from back in 2009 to compensate RCS&RDS for not holding radio spectrum frequency in the 900-MHz band, as Orange, Vodafone and Cosmote do.
(English version by Daniela Stoican)