Romania defers 5G auction for last quarter

Romania’s telecom market regulator ANCOM announced that the tender book for the sale of frequency bands allocated for 5G applications would be completed by September and the tender itself would take place in the last quarter of this year, Mediafax reported.

The full-fledged 5G applications would thus become available commercially within two years (from now), ANRE estimates, warning about possible unexpected delays.

ANCOM, which is headed by former prime minister Sorin Grindeanu, previously implied that the auction would take place “during the first part of the year”. The postponement was caused by the Memorandum signed by Romania and the US for the development of safe 5G technologies (that had to be endorsed by the Government and later included in the tender book). Meanwhile, the European Union was also late with its guidance on “high-risk” suppliers of 5G technologies, which was released at the end of January.

The unnamed issue is Chinese company Huawei - mentioned by neither the Memorandum with the US nor the EU’s guidance, but implied in each of the two cases. Huawei is being investigated in the US for espionage on behalf of the Chinese Government.

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