April 30 (SeeNews) - Romania’s telecoms regulator, ANCOM, said on Thursday three companies have qualified to the next stage of an auction for two national digital television multiplexes, 31 regional multiplexes and 19 local ones.
The companies are: Grup Est Security SRL, Info Total Press SA and TV Sat 2002, ANCOM said in a statement, adding that a fourth interested company, Nova Media SRL, had failed to meet the tender requirements.
The tender commission will announce the winners by May 13.
The minimum licence fee for each of the two national multiplexes is 300,000 euro ($333,630), whereas the one for the regional and the local multiplexes ranges between 1,000 euro and 10,000 euro, ANCOM has said.
Bidders for multiplexes are required to submit an initial bid, indicating the categories and the number of multiplexes they wish to purchase. If demand exceeds the number of available multiplexes, the auction may continue with primary rounds for the multiplexes where demand exceeds supply. For the remaining categories, the winners will be designated based on the initial bid.
Once the winners and the prices of all multiplexes for which there is demand have been determined, the auction will continue with an allocation round during which the multiplexes will be awarded to the winning bidders based on the additional sum they are willing to pay in order to acquire a certain frequency allocation.
All the multiplexes will be granted for a 10-year period. National multiplexes will cover the whole country with digital terrestrial television services, whereas each of the regional and local multiplexes will serve specific allotment, which may cover one county or one locality.
A digital multiplex is a group of radio broadcasting and television programmes, additional multimedia services and other associated identification data transmitted from the emission stations to the end-users by terrestrial radio means, using digital modulation within the limits of a standard television channel/frequency block.
In February, ANCOM sold nine regional digital television multiplexes to five companies for a combined 86,011 euro following a tender procedure. 2K Telecom won five regional multiplexes, while Radio M Plus, Regal, Cargo Sped and Digital Video Broadcast got one regional multiplex each.
($ = 0.8992 euro)