It became clear that this might be the amount collected after the communications market regulator ANCOM announced the Defense Ministry was asking for at least EUR234 million to free up frequency bands that can be sold to operators for 4G mobile data services.
Considering that the Ministry’s costs required by freeing up the spectrum alone amount to EUR234 million, licensing fees cannot be lower than that, but the government may decide to ask for more and the rest of the money will go to the state budget, ANCOM chairman Catalin Marinescu told ZF.
The communications market watchdog will organize the auction and the decision about the asking price falls upon the government.
The government will auction 4G licenses, as well as licenses to operate in the 900 MHz frequency band, which has been in use since 1996, as Orange, Vodafone and Cosmote rights expire. Another competitor for this frequency is RCS&RDS, and the revenue here might exceed EUR200 million.
ANCOM’s chairman would not provide an estimate but used Greece as an example, where the government got EUR380 million from selling fifteen-year licenses.
Mobilrom and Mobifon, the current Orange and Vodafone, paid $75 million to get their operating licenses for fifteen years, which expired in 2011. The two will have to pay EUR6.4 million each for the one-year extension of the said licenses.
Cosmote, the number three on the market, got its fifteen-year license for $53 million in 1998.
(English version by Loredana Fratila-Cristescu)