Romanian regulator to allow 3G across 2G bands
www.WirelessFederation.com/news: The technical and administrative measures of the provision for deployment of 3G services using the 900MHz and 1800MHz frequency bands by the cellular operators has been completed by Romanian regulator the National Communications Authority (ANCOM).
The 3G coverage of Orange Romania, Vodafone Romania and Cosmote will now be improved across the entirety of their current footprint.
According to Catalin Marinescu, president of ANCOM, this measure is part of the authority’s stated intention to promote broadband development in Romania and along with the CDMA license awards in 2008 and the forthcoming review of local loop unbundling, the liberalization of spectrum in the 900MHz and 1800MHz bands will contribute to the increased penetration of mobile internet access.
Ghana’s Westel to operate a cellular network
Western Telesystems (WESTEL) Ghana Limited has been granted a license by Ghana’s telecom regulator, National Communications Authority (NCA) to operate a mobile phone service.
The entry of Westel into the mobile telecom arena will increase the number of cellular networks in Ghana, to five.
The acting Director-General of the NCA, Major John Tandoh (retd), recently handed over the licence, which formally empowered the company to operate, to the acting Managing Director of WESTEL, Ms Ursula Owusu, at a brief signing ceremony in Accra.
WESTEL, which is already plagued with problems of meeting its targets as far as fixed line service is concerned, comes at a time the mobile sector has become more competitive.
Presently, Scancom Ghana Limited, operators of Areeba, holds the lion share of the market with up to 52.4 per cent of the total number of subscribers of 3,798,096 as of the first quarter of the year.
It is followed by Millicom Ghana Limited’s tiGO GSM mobile service with 770,154 subscribers, GhanaTelecom’s Onetouch with 711,119 and Kasapa Telecom, operators of Kasapa mobile service with 136,823 subscribers.
The company, which is in competition with Ghana Telecom fixed line service, lags behind in the competition, with only a little over 2,816 subscribers, constituting about one per cent of the total market share of 348,397 subscribers nationwide.
Source- mobileafrica
