RCS & RDS. Orange, Telekom, Vodafone, out of nowhere today came an extremely important announcement regarding the 5G network that mobile operators want to create in the country, and everything as very good news. According to the executive director of ANCOM, by the end of July, the project for the auction of the frequencies that will be used for the 5G networks built by RCS & RDS, and the rest of the telecommunications operators, will be completed.
RCS & RDS. After the completion of the project, ANCOM will also determine the date when the auction for the 5G frequencies will actually take place, and as we have known for some time now, this will happen somewhere around the fall of this year. Unfortunately, it seems that the decision of the Romanian Government, through GEO 114/2018, by which RCS & RDS, and the rest of the companies, are obliged to pay 1 billion euros for 5G licenses, remains in force.
RCS & RDS. Orange, Telekom, Vodafone, HUGE ANNOUNCEMENT about 5G
RCS & RDS. We already had a first rebellion by those from Telekom who announced that they could boycott the tender for 5G, but apart from them I have not seen any other such brave decision from any other company. So far we have seen that there were price increases initially applied by RCS & RDS, and then Telekom and Vodafone also announced price increases for services, Orange being the only ones who have not yet announced such a decision.
There are other changes that are not related to ANCOM, such as the part of tariffs. They are passed in Ordinance 114, but they are still under discussion, with different points of view. From a financial point of view, we had a point of view on GEO 114 and we await the changes with interest. These are done by the Government, and we don't know what the value was and we don't know if anything was reached. From what was published on the website of the Ministry of Finance, it seems that things remain as they were established. Until it reaches the Government's table, we have no way of knowing how it will turn out.
RCS & RDS. Even if Orange has not announced that it will increase the prices of services in Romania, it will most likely do so, or it will choose to offer 5G services expensive enough to cover all these measures of the Romanian Government. Of course, this is not beneficial for Romanians, and if Orange will have high prices, then Telekom and Vodafone will act in the same way, and RCS & RDS could be the only ones that could offer 5G services at reasonable prices for Romanians.
RCS & RDS. Until then, sometime in the summer we will find out what the final project for the 5G frequency auction looks like, and in the second part of 2019 we will see the actual auction.
