Telenor becomes second operator - Government to accept offer for fixed telephony services on January 21st

As Blic learns, the Government will accept Telenor's offer for purchase of license for the second fixed operator at the meeting on Thursday (January 21, 2010). The state will get 1.05m EUR from Telenor for the license, while Telekom Srbija will, finally, stay without dominant position in the market after five years since its right to monopoly expired!

The state's decision to accept the only offer should not be surprising since Serbia is the only country in the region that still has only one fixed telephony operator. At the same time, from the beginning of the story about new operator and allotment of the license, the authorities looked with favor on possibility of the appearance of Telenor as the second fixed telephony operator.

At the opening of the bid in RATEL last Friday, Telenor's CEO Ćel Morten Jonsen said that the company was ready to continue with the investments in telecommunications in Serbia.

- If it gets the license, Telenor will offer fair terms to Telekom Srbija for rental of the telecommunication infrastructure. I expect that we will reach the agreement since Telekom can earn few million euros from that deal prior to 2018. If we fail to reach the agreement, it is important that RATEL resolves that problem and enables access to the infrastructure - said Jonsen. Jonsen said that Telenor would be investing few million euros every year in construction of its own infrastructure.

It is very important for Telenor, as the company's CEO pointed out, that it gets the possibility to build a network of optical fibers across Serbia, which will enable the citizens high-speed data flow and make the operations of companies easier.