Eagle Mobile one step from officially being awarded 3G licence

TIRANA, Oct. 24 – Albania’s Electronic and Postal Communications Authority (AKEP) has rated Eagle Mobile’s bid of Euro 4 million to get the third 3G licence with 100 points and given Plus Communication zero points for its symbolic 1 Euro 1 bid in a tender held earlier this month. Turkish owned Eagle Mobile offered 4.03 million Euros to get Albania’s third 3G licence in a bid which will probably make it the third mobile operator offering the 3G services in Albania. Meanwhile, Albanian-owned Plus Communication bid a symbolic 1 Euro on the 3G licence. AKEP officials said they will carefully examine bids before a decision is taken.
According to an earlier decision by the Electronic and Postal Communications Authority (AKEP), the two remaining licences would be awarded in parallel at a starting bid of 4 million euros. The new decision comes after an earlier tender in 2012 at a price tag of 12.5 million failed and soon after a new consultation was launched to produce a solution.
In a tender organized by AKEP last February, Turkish-owned Eagle Mobile offered only 3.5 million Euros while Albanian-owned Plus Communication 2.2 million Euros, bids which automatically disqualified them from the 3G race, making the full liberalization of the 3G market impossible in the near future. The tender’s failure was an expected result after both remaining companies had described the price tag for the third 3G permit as unaffordable for them and called for the two remaining licences to be granted in parallel at a lower price tag.
The new 3G tender comes soon after AMC won the second 3G licence and one year after Vodafone Albania became the first operator to offer the service.
Operating in Albania since March 2008, Eagle Mobile increased its number of subscribers to 1.3 million in the first half of 2012 and its market share in terms of subscribers to around 25 percent, according to AKEP data.