Telecom authority head: 5G technology to be majority in Romania at 2026-end

Telecommunications operators give us hope that, sometime by the end of 2026, 5G technology will be the majority in Romania, but the transition will not be simple, president of the National Authority for Communications Administration and Regulation (ANCOM) Valeriu Zgonea told a specialist debate on Wednesday."We are talking about smart communities. Unfortunately, there are several approaches in Romania. As always, when we make a transition towards a certain type of society, we choose this concept of decentralisation instead of thinking about a common strategy, an action plan, some generally valid principles and follow this process. Unfortunately, the shortcomings of decentralisation outweigh the benefits of decentralisation. At this point, if we are talking about smart solutions to all these problems that we find in a community with technology and connectivity closer to the citizen, easier for them to use, I think 4G technology offers enough tools to support communities, if they have the financial resources and have the capacity. Smart specialisation is not very simple for communities. If we talk about technical issues, then we can say this: at the end of last year we had about 3% 5G in Romania, around 720 - 730,000 SIM cards. If we look at the data reported by the operators, somewhere at the end of August there were about 750 5G stations, about 5,000 cells in urban communities. If we are not careful and don't have a plan to discuss with mobile operators we might find that this technology will be the majority in Romania after 2027. The dialogue we have today with the operators gives us hope that, somewhere at the end of 2026, it will be a majority technology in Romania. The transition is not simple," Zgonea said.The ANCOM chief pointed out that Romania's digital transition cannot take place without a joint effort of public institutions and the private sector.He added that the local administration must be helped to find the financial resources to build smart projects."The role of the local government is important, but the local government, without support from the private sector and without support from the state, will find it very difficult to find the financial resources to build a project. They don't have technical support, they don't have enough resources to apply for such a solution. The technology will reach Romania and will be implemented. First in urban centres, where we are talking about the wide economy, where there are a lot of solutions that we need to support, and then in rural communities. ANCOM has come up with two elements in recent years in support of this concept. Firstly, it has made a model regulation for electronic communications providers who want to access the properties of the TAUs, how they should do this and secondly it has launched a Guide that is constantly changing on all the smart radio solutions and radio equipment that we use for smart communities, so that they are very careful what they select, how they select when they want to implement such solutions in their communities," said Valeriu Zgonea.Representatives of the authorities, together with companies, consultants and financial institutions, are participating on Wednesday in the 8th edition of the Smart Transformation Forum - 2023 edition.