Bulgaria To Cancel Tenders for Two GSM Licences - Telecoms Regulator

Under local legislation, the CRC had to release the names of the bidders in the tenders, if any, after the deadline for the placing of bids expired on Thursday.

“The Communications Regulation Commission (CRC) is expected to take a decision for the cancellation of the tender procedures for GSM 4 and 5,” Irina Kaneva, a PR consultant for the CRC, told SeeNews in a statement. She declined any further comment.

Cosmo Bulgaria Mobile, a unit of Greece's Cosmote that runs Bulgaria's second mobile phone operator Globul, and two Bulgarian-based firms, Epsilon Construction and Commtech, have bought tender documents for a licence for two bands of 15 megahertz (MHz) each in the 1,800 MHz frequency range, CRC said earlier. The starting price in the tender was set at 57 million levs ($36.7 million/28.9 million euro).

Epsilon Construction has also bought documents for the second tender, for a licence for two bands of 10 MHz each in the 1,800 MHz frequency range. The starting price in that tender was set at 38 million levs.

In August CRC cancelled a tender for a 20-year GSM licence citing irregularities in the sole bid it had received, from Liechtenstein-registered TelCo. The starting price in the tender was set at 38 million levs.

Bulgaria, population 7.6 million, has another two wireless operators besides Globul. They are Mobiltel, a unit of Telekom Austria, and Vivatel, a company owned by Bulgaria's dominant fixed-line operator BTC.

(1 euro = 1.95583 Bulgarian levs)