One Telecommunications

Powerful, politically-connected businessman Shefqet Kastrati has entered Albania's crowded media market with the purchase on Monday of Euronews Albania, following in the footsteps of Samir Mane who bought TV SCAN last month.

The alleged wrongdoing went back even further than 2011.

MakTel once dominated the mobile market in North Macedonia, operating since 2001 as a joint venture between the state and Magyar Telekom, the Hungarian subsidiary of Deutsche Telekom. Its only competitor was the far smaller Cosmote network.

The Bulgarian incumbent telco Vivacom generated 29% of United Group's revenues in the first quarter.

Fourteen years later, in September 2020, the police came knocking, arresting 20 suspects in coordinated raids in 10 countries in Europe and the Middle East to dismantle the Albanian crime syndicate, 'Kompania Bello'.

Greece's telecoms watchdog, the Hellenic Telecommunications and Post Commission (EETT), on Wednesday signed contracts with the country's three major telecoms providers Cosmote, Vodafone and Wind for the use of the 700MHz, 2GHz, 3400-3800 MHz and 26 GHz radio frequency band widths, which pave the way for a 5G network.

Wednesday sees the start of the state auction of bandwidth for the development of fifth-generation telecommunication networks (5G) in Greece, but the state-of-the-art services to subscribers will also come at an added cost.