Montenegro Invites Bids for New Mobile Operator

Montenegro's Agency for Electronic Communications, EKIP, said on Monday that there had interest from several foreign companies in entering the country's telecoms market, causing existing operators to express fears that their profits would be hit and the economic potential of the Montenegrin market reduced. 

Despite only having slightly over 600,000 inhabitants, Montenegro has decided to call a tender for a fourth mobile telephony operator, although the country's regulator did not specify when the bid will be launched.

"Certain interest from foreign investors has been expressed," EKIP's director, Zoran Sekulic, told local media.

"Therefore EKIP has designed procedures to reserve a part of the radio-frequency resources for potential new operators and to provide them with sufficient radio-frequency resources for commercial operation," Sekulic said.

EKIP has wanted a fourth player in the Montenegrin market since 2011 - when another offer was submitted, but later withdrawn - to encourage competition and encourage a further drop in prices for calls and internet usage.

But some analysts have said that the optimal number of operators in a single market is usually three, and the lack of takers for a fourth licence in the past is a testament to that.

The other three operators - the Norwegian Telenor, Crnogorski Telekom, which owned by Deutsche Telekom, and M:tel, an offshoot of the Serbian MTS - expressed unhappiness about the decision.
M:tel's CEO Vladimir Lucic said the Montenegrin telecommunications market was very competitive already highly developed, so there is no place for a fourth provider. 

"The Montenegrin telecommunications market is covered by all the big regional players, and even bigger...