The government of Macedonia is looking to licence three more firms to offer 3G mobile services in the country so as to liberalise the market and stimulate competition. The Ministry of Transport says the tender process for the 3G awards will be prepared in the coming months with starting prices for each concession expected to be set at EUR 10 million (USD 14.5 million).
In January 2008 the Agency for Electronic Communications (AEC) in Macedonia, awarded a 3G licence to mobile operator CosmoFon following a tender it launched in November 2007. The licence cost EUR 10 million and will enable CosmoFon to deploy a UMTS network supporting data speeds of up to 3.6Mbps using HSDPA technology. At the time of the award, the operator’s parent Cosmote said its Macedonian unit had been allocated 2×15MHz plus 1×5MHz spectrum, CosmoFon has intentions to launch 3G commercial services during 3Q 2008.
There are currently three mobile network operators in Macedonia, currently only Cosmote’s CosmoFon network has a 3G licence. As shown below, CosmoFon are the second largest operator, T-Mobile the biggest with 1.22 million subscribers and VIP Operator are the smallest:
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