Bulgaria's A1, Cetin to build 5G networks on roads to Serbia, Greece

For the territory of Bulgaria, the two projects will receive a total of over 5.57 million euro ($6 million) in grants from the Connecting Europe Facility (CEF), the ministry said in a press release.

In the first project, Cetin Bulgaria, an affiliate of telco Yettel Bulgaria, will partner with the Sofia Technical University to implement cross-border 5G infrastructure between Sofia and Dimitrovgrad in Serbia, as part of the Orient/East-Med Corridor, which is one of the ten priority axes of the Trans-European Transport Network. This project will be granted more than 3.36 million euro in funding.

Separately, A1 Bulgaria, part of A1 Telekom Austria Group, will deploy seamless 5G and roaming over 173 km from Sofia to the Kulata border checkpoint with Greece under a project dubbed 5G SEAGUL. The Bulgarian company will benefit from EU grants of 2.21 million euro. Greek project partners Wings and Cosmote will work on a 300 km road section on the Greek side. The project must be completed within 36 months, the ministry said.

Cetin Bulgaria's Balkan 5G project is among the 42 public and private undertakings to which the EU Commission last week allocated a total of 260 million euro from the CEF Digital programme. Project 5G SEAGUL was approved earlier this year.

($ = 0.9252 euro)