Page 75 - SAMENA Trends - March-April 2025

REGULATORY & POLICY UPDATES SAMENA TRENDS

The Racsa telecoms arm of Costa Rica's state-run Liberty and Claro acquired equal amounts of spectrum,
power utility ICE wants the government to grant it securing one block each in the 700MHz band, one in the
more spectrum, including in 3.5GHz – the prime band 2300MHz band, four in the 3500MHz band and one in
for 5G – claiming it is at a disadvantage compared to the 26/28GHz band. Each block in the 3500MHz band
Costa Rica private operators. The company formally asked ICT has a bandwidth of 25MHz. Each operator paid a total
minister Paula Bogantes to reallocate spectrum in of US$16.3mn for all the frequencies acquired. These
mid-bands 2.6GHz and 3.5GHz The reason, according resources will go to universal service fund Fonatel,
to the company, is that the ICE group was excluded which finances internet access for over 239,000
from the multi-band 5G spectrum auction and therefore low-income families. As of 2024, ICE held a total of
would now face a competitive disadvantage compared 309MHz in spectrum bands below 6GHz, while Racsa
to private sector competitors Liberty Costa Rica and held 100MHz. In comparison, Liberty Latin America
Claro. The company says it holds less than half the and Claro each owned approximately 100MHz. With
frequencies granted to its competitors. Last August, the auction, Liberty and Claro each added 100MHz in
ICE appealed before the comptroller general against its the 3.5GHz band, as well as additional spectrum to
exclusion from the auction, but had its request rejected. reinforce their 4G networks.
In the auction concluded in January this year, both (March 25, 2025) www.bnamericas.com

Arcep published the final results of the spectrum Mayotte on 11 March 2025. On 20 March 2025, Arcep
assignment procedures for the 1800 MHz and 2.1 GHz issued operators licenses to use frequencies in these
bands in Guadeloupe, in Martinique and in Réunion, bands. The issuance of these licenses marks the
and for the 900 MHz, 1800 MHz and 2.1 GHz bands completion of these assignment procedures.
France in Guiana, in Saint Barthélemy, in Saint Martin and in (March 20, 2025) www.en.arcep.fr

India’s 5G subscriber base has reportedly grown to 2025, with 99.6% availability in all districts. The ministry
around 250 million since commercial 5G services were added that the 5G deployments exceed their minimum
launched almost two and a half years ago, according to rollout obligations. Reliance Jio and Bharti Airtel
the latest figures from the Ministry of Communications. launched commercial 5G services in October 2022, and
India Earlier this month, the Telecom Regulatory Authority of completed their initial nationwide rollouts in early 2024.
Vodafone Idea launched its 5G network in Mumbai last
India said there were 898.57 million mobile broadband
subscribers in India at the end of 2024. TRAI doesn’t week. The ministry statement was issued a day after
break out its figures by network generation, but the Nokia released its latest Mobile Broadband Index (MBiT)
ministry’s figure suggests 5G users now account 2025 report, which forecasts 5G subscriptions in India
for around 27.8% of mobile broadband subscribers. to grow to 770 million by 2028, although that projection
According to a report from ETTelecom on Friday, the also assumed 290 million 5G users by the end of 2024,
ministry also said in a statement that telcos have which is 40 million higher than the ministry’s numbers.
deployed 469,000 5G base stations in all states and (March 24, 2025) www.developingtelecoms.com
union territories across the country of February 28,

Tencent Cloud and TrueWatch have announced a TrueWatch says its platform consolidates monitoring
partnership to launch what is said to be Indonesia's tools into a single pane of glass, simplifying complexity
first multi-cloud SaaS observability platform. The and providing full cost transparency. Through this
collaboration between Tencent Cloud, the cloud business partnership, TrueWatch will leverage Tencent Cloud's
Indonesia of global technology company Tencent, and TrueWatch, local data centre infrastructure to launch Indonesia's
a Singapore-based unified monitoring platform provider first multi-cloud SaaS observability platform,
will, the partners say, enable TrueWatch to deploy its empowering enterprises with real-time monitoring,
innovative observability platform within Tencent Cloud's analytics and cloud-native observability tools across
Indonesia Availability Zone, ensuring low-latency multiple cloud environments. By deploying on Tencent
access, robust security, and compliance for Indonesian Cloud's Indonesia Availability Zone, TrueWatch says
enterprises. An availability zone is a physical internet it has achieved high availability and reliability for its
data centre (IDC) of Tencent Cloud with independent observability platform, ensuring a 99.99% uptime SLA for
power supply and network in the same region. its enterprise customers. It also says that with Tencent

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