Hungarian Mobile Market: the Goal is to Boost Competition

2013. február 27.

The competitiveness of the country in the 21st century hinges on the development of the digital economy. This is precisely why the National Media and Infocommunications Authority (NMHH) has established a regulatory environment which opens up the opportunity for development in the domestic mobile market as well. Once again, the goal of the authority is to provide access to the benefits offered by mobile services for the widest possible strata of society and businesses.

NMHH strives to ensure that the commercial, financial, educational, cultural, health and entertainment industry services built on online tools become available to an increasing number of users. Therefore, through the regulatory tools available, the authority intends to boost competition among telecommunications service providers in order to further increase mobile internet coverage and to ensure that the services related to mobile internet reach a competitive price level also in a European comparison.

Stimulating market competition is an important objective; foreign examples demonstrate that it will benefit a country’s economic development if the entire population and all business entities have access to mobile internet, and the related services are available in the mobile market at an affordable price. NMHH continuously monitors the trends with a focus on competitiveness, and in the next few days it will launch an independent website designed to inform the population regarding all developments taking place in the telecommunications market that have a relevance to private individuals.

With that in mind, over the past few years, NMHH has created a regulatory environment which promotes the development and competitiveness of a transparently operating telecommunications sector. The publication of the authority’s spectrum sale strategy was a great step forward, while NMHH’s decree on frequency allocation has opened up the mobile frequencies on offer for the use of all modern technologies. Parallel to this process, NMHH has cleared the obstacles standing in the way of new investments by rendering the frequency fee payable by service providers independent of all development projects implemented by them on the network. Previously, the frequency fee was increased after each development project.

In addition to the application of regulatory tools, NMHH also believes that a partnership cooperation between all domestic and international participants of the telecommunications sector plays an important role in setting off a number of processes in the telecommunications market that are beneficial for both the population and the country.

Budapest, 26 February 2013

National Media and Infocommunications Authority, Communication Directorate