The company says it expects the service to extend all over Albania in a few months
TIRANA, Jan. 7 – Tirana will be the first city where Eagle Mobile will launch its new 3G service. The service is expected to be launched this month after the Turkish-owned mobile operator became the third operator to be granted the 3G licence in a tender held last October. The company says it expects the service to extend all over Albania in a few months.
“Eagle aims to provide top speed to its clients. HSPA technology + dual carrier are being applied to reach this goal. With the help of dual carrier technology, the two frequencies of bands shall be utilized simultaneously by enabling the loading of data up to 42 Mbps. Notwithstanding that this speed could be reached under laboratory conditions, Eagle Mobile reached 40 Mbps speed in practice,” says the company in a statement.
According to Mr. Murat Cakmak, Director of ALBtelecom and Eagle Mobile network, the Dual Carrier technology is being extended throughout Albania in a way that every user shall benefit from this technology as a unique market experience. The potential support from ALBtelecom optical fibres infrastructure are expected to make 3G technology provided by Eagle Mobile the fastest mobile internet provider in Albania. Eagle 3G service will make an obvious difference to the current 3G service, and the most important thing is that, the consumers will not have unpleasant surprises from internet invoices. Another expected novelty is the averting of technological difficulties, meaning the quantity in bit and byte, where the internet will be provided as a service fulfilling the needs of Eagle consumers. The users will be free to choose the internet bundle appropriate to their consumption by knowing as such how much to pay. Video calls, sending/receiving of e-mail, downloading of many songs, online games, watching television channels and videos will be far easier with Eagle 3G.
Albania’s Electronic and Postal Communications Authority (AKEP) rated Eagle Mobile’s bid of Euro 4 million to get the third 3G licence with 100 points and gave Plus Communication zero points for its symbolic 1 Euro 1 bid in a tender held last October. Turkish owned Eagle Mobile offered 4.03 million Euros to get Albania’s third 3G licence in a bid making 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.
