Telecom companies without rights to use frequency spectra in Romania could offer services to Romanian clients as virtual mobile operators, using other operators' networks as hosts. The country's National Authority for Management and Regulation in Communications (ANCOM) proposed a draft guide for the activity of companies that would offer electronic mobile communication by accessing other operators' networks. This would allow companies that are unsuccessful in buying mobile telephony frequencies in the planned tender this year to negotiate deals with the winners and still offer services on the local market.

“Virtual mobile operators are suppliers of mobile telephony services with their own clients, but which don't run their own network, but use another supplier's network. […] They have their own commercial offer, which can be different from its host network operator's,” according to a statement from ANCOM.

Companies interested in offering such services in Romania must notify ANCOM at the start of activity and will ask for mobile telephony numbers from the authority. They will be free to negotiate interconnection agreements with any mobile or landline communication services supplier in the country.

This decision comes before ANCOM's planned tender for frequency bids, scheduled for the first half of 2012. The communication authority has extended the licenses for Orange and Vodafone until the end of 2012. Each operator will have to pay EUR 6.4 million for the license extension. Following the tender this year, the new licenses for the bands currently owned by Orange Romania and Vodafone Romania will come into force at the beginning of 2013. For the bands currently owned by Cosmote, the new license will become valid in April 2014.

Vodafone and Orange paid USD 75 million each for their license back in 1996. Cosmote bought the rights to use the 1,710-1,785 MHz/1,805-1,880 MHz frequencies in 1998, valid for 15 years, for some USD 53 million.

Corina Saceanu, corina@romania-insider.com