Page 114 - SAMENA Trends - August-September 2025

REGULATORY & POLICY UPDATES SAMENA TRENDS

Serbia has formally launched its long-anticipated set at around €100 million. Payments will be made in
5G spectrum auction. The Regulatory Authority for two instalments: on award of the license and by mid-
Electronic Communications and Postal Services 2026, according to SeeNews. Eligibility conditions are
(RATEL) has initiated bidding for licenses in six key designed to ensure only financially robust operators
Serbia frequency ranges: 700 MHz, 900 MHz, 1800 MHz, 2100 can take part. Bidders must demonstrate at least 1.5
MHz, 2600 MHz, and 3500 MHz.The auction follows the
million mobile subscribers as of December 2024 and
adoption of a rulebook earlier this year that set minimum mobile revenues above €300 million last year. In terms
conditions for license issuance, paving the way for of rollout obligations, successful bidders must install
the competitive tender. Licenses will run until March a minimum of 200 5G base stations in the first year –
2047, with no option for extension. Fees vary by band, most of them in Belgrade and other major cities – and
ranging from about €7 million for 2100 MHz spectrum at least 1,000 across Serbia in the second year.
up to €35.5 million for the 3400–3800 MHz range, (September 3, 2025) www.mobileeurope.co.uk
while the minimum cost of a package of frequencies is

South Africa’s Competition Commission has approved shareholder. CEC is wholly owned by The Prepaid
Cell C’s proposed acquisition of Comm Equipment Company (TPC), a mobile virtual network aggregator
Company (CEC). In a statement, the Commission said (MVNA) that provisions airtime and data in South
it had cleared the deal without conditions, finding it Africa. TPC’s parent, Blue Label Telecoms, will acquire
South Africa unlikely to substantially impact competition in any shares in Cell C as part of the transaction, according to
market and noting that it does not raise significant Techpoint Africa. The approval follows rival Vodacom’s
public-interest concerns. Explaining its decision, the move to bolster its portfolio via the acquisition of Maziv,
watchdog said Cell C is the primary acquiring firm, is the parent company of Vumatel and Dark Fiber Africa.
not controlled by another company, and has a widely (August 15, 2025) www.developingtelecoms.com
distributed shareholding with no single controlling

South Korea’s privacy regulator has announced it will related data, including 26.9 million IMSI numbers, were
fine SK Telecom 134.8 billion won (~$97 million) in compromised in the attack and may have been leaked.
response to a data breach the company revealed in In response to the breach, SKT pledged to bolster
April. The fine is the largest in the PIPC’s history to date. its cybersecurity, as well as offering free USIM card
South Korea Prior to this, the committee’s largest fines were those replacements to all affected subscribers. The company
also paused its acquisition of new subscribers, only
levied against Google and Meta in 2022 for collecting
consumer data without consent. The tech giants were restarting the process in June. In its announcement,
fined 69.2 billion won (~$50 million) and 30.8 billion the PIPC described SKT’s internal cybersecurity system
won (~$22 million), respectively. The cyberattack in as having been in a “very weak condition”, saying the
question took place on June 15, 2022, but was not company had failed to properly manage access rights to
reported to the Korea Internet & Security Agency (KISA) customer data and did not encrypt USIM authentication
by SKT until April 22 this year, suggesting that installed keys. It also accused the company of delaying notifying
malware remained undetected for three years. Reports affected customers. As such, alongside the punitive
suggest that 23 of SKT’s servers were impacted, which fine, the PIPC has also approved corrective measures
collectively held four different types of USIM data, from SKT, which include a system audit, additional
including International Mobile Subscriber Identity (IMSI) security measures, and a review of the company’s data
numbers. These unique numbers are used to identify governance policies.
individual customers. In total, 9.32 gigabytes of USIM- (August 28, 2025) www.totaltele.com

Thailand is the latest country to announce plans to offer to request the allocation at no cost for non-profit use,
spectrum for private use by factories and businesses. provided they apply it to improve internal operations. The
The country’s regulator, the National Broadcasting and government’s wider aim when it comes to allocating free
Telecommunications Commission (NBTC), recently spectrum for factories and enterprises is to accelerate
Thailand said that it will release 100MHz of bandwidth in the the country's Thailand 4.0 ambitions. Thailand 4.0
is a campaign to promote innovation. Factories can
4800MHz band under a private network operator (PNO)
license. This system allows factories and enterprises collaborate with equipment vendors or telecom

114 AUG-SEP 2025