National Regulatory Agency for Electronic Communications and Information Technology of the Republic of Moldova

The Administrative Board of the National Regulatory Agency for Electronic Communications and Information Technology (ANRCETI) issued decisions to grant eight licenses for the right to use radio spectrum, available in the frequency bands 800 MHz, 900 MHz and 1800 MHz by the three mobile providers (JSC "Orange Moldova", JSC "Moldcell" and JSC "Moldtelecom"), for the provision of public terrestrial cell mobile services. These decisions were issued based on applications from the three providers, at the end of last week.

The Board issued the decisions under the Law on Electronic Communications, in accordance with the Program of radio spectrum management for 2013 - 2020, approved by Government Decision no. 116 of 11.02.2013. This normative act establishes that licenses for the use of radio spectrum from the aforementioned bands will be issued by ANRCETI directly to the providers that already have deployed networks and are authorized to provide public terrestrial cell mobile services. The issuance of the licenses is caused by the expiry of licenses held by JSC "Orange Moldova" and JSC "Moldcell" (11/05/2014). The validity of the new license is 15 years, starting November 6, 2014.

According to the Board Decisions, JSC "Orange Moldova" and JSC "Moldcell" will be granted three licenses each: one for the use frequencies in the 800 MHz (20 MHz total band width, 2x10MHz), in the 900 MHz (20 MHz total band width, 2x10MHz) and 1800 MHz (50 MHz total width, 2x25 MHz). JSC "Moldtelecom" will be granted two licenses - one for the use of frequencies in the 900 MHz (10 MHz total width, 2x5MHz) and 1800 MHz (50 MHz total width, 2x25 MHz). Frequency bands 800, 900 and 1800 MHz mean the bands for duplex use 791-821/832-862 MHz duplex, 890-915/935-960 MHz and 1710-1785/1805-1880 MHz.

The licenses will be issued to the providers upon their payment of license fees, within 30 days of the date ANRCETI decisions are adopted. The amount of license fees for each of these bands is determined by the Program of radio spectrum management for 2013 - 2020, approved by Government Decision no. 116 of 11.02.2013. Jointly, these providers must pay for the licenses the MDL equivalent of 62,5 million euro into the state budget.

All licenses will be granted by ANRCETI, for the first time, under the technological neutrality regime. This means that the license holder will be able to choose any technology to be used in these frequency bands, compatible with GSM-UMTS/HSPA systems, WIMAX (known as 3G), LTE (known as 4G), as well as the improved technologies based on the listed standards, without having to request a administrative permissive decision, also liable to ensure the continuity of services. Before these decisions, the spectrum-assigning licenses authorized providers to use only a specific technology for each band. For example, licenses used to allow only the use of GSM in the frequency bands 900 and 1800 MHz.

After the new licenses are issued, the total available spectrum for mobile network providers in 800, 900 and 1800 MHz will increase over the volume of spectrum these bands they currently hold, by about 195%, which will allow them to ensure the sustainable development of their networks. Due to the better propagation of waves within these frequencies, this spectrum will enable providers to incur lower costs in developing both traditional GSM systems and 3G and 4G mobile broadband (in future - 5G systems and more advanced) and to ensure better mobile broadband coverage of territory and population.

July 28, 2014