5G Commercial Services

The commercial 5G services available today in Romania use the bands 3400 – 3800 MHz, and starting with 2021 also the band 2100 MHz. The 3400 – 3800 MHz bands have also been used in the past (since 2001) to provide electronic communications services, mainly to companies. The 3500 MHz band (3400 – 3800 MHz) is the pioneering band for 5G in Europe, and the 2100 MHz band has been used since 2004 for 3G UMTS services. As the frequency usage rights in the above-mentioned bands were granted under technology neutral conditions, they could be used for commercial 5G services, as well.

In the last 3 years, the mobile internet traffic in Romania has doubled every year. In the medium term, mobile networks cannot cope with these increases and the leap in performance introduced by 5G without the use of additional radio frequencies.

See more details in the5G Technology section.

The first commercial version of 5G was launched in Romania in May 2019, in several localities, the services being currently available on 3 networks. At the beginning of 2021, 5G coverage was limited to large urban centres (Bucharest, Brașov, Cluj-Napoca, Constanța, Iași, Ploiești, Timișoara, etc.) and to a number of medium and small urban or rural areas. Gradually, 5G services will become available in more and more localities.

In order to use 5G services you need 5G compatible terminals.

As of 2021, mobile operators recognize the following requirements* for 5G phones, so that they could enable proper operation on the respective operators’ individual 5G networks:

• Digi – CAT16 in the 3600 MHz band
• Orange – CAT20 sold exclusively by the operator
• Vodafone – minimum Octa Core processing unit of minimum 1.8 GHz, internal memory minimum 6GB RAM, operating system: Android 9.0 or newer; support for 5G band NR: N78; support for LTE+NR Dual Connectivity operation using B3/B20 (LTE) and N78 (NR) bands

* The requirements have been extracted from the information available on the websites of electronic communications operators in Romania as of 20 April 2021.

The general terms and conditions for service provision are available at the following links:

Orange: https://www.orange.ro/termeni-si-conditii/

Vodafone: https://www.vodafone.ro/personal/servicii-si-tarife/termeni-si-proceduri-legale/conditiile-de-furnizare-a-serviciilor/index.htm

Digi: https://www.digi.ro/contracte-furnizare-servicii

5G services are expected to witness large scale take-up in Romania in the next 2-3 years (according to ANCOM’s survey, available in Romanian here), which is to boost competition in the provision of commercial 5G services.

Currently, the prices of mobile subscriptions in Romania are among the lowest in Europe.

The commercial offers available on the providers’ websites (Orange, Vodafone and Digi) target a wide range of user categories, by price and by a variety of features. Moreover, such offers vary by configuration (5G available for all the tariff plans, or only for certain premium plans), coverage, download/upload speed, best effort speed and other included resources, the implications of reaching a resource ceiling (e.g. limited speed or per-MB pricing), etc.

Regulation (EU) no.2015/2120, a document which is binding on the Member States, guarantees access to the open internet, regardless of the technology used.

The EU Regulation in force does not guarantee net neutrality in terms of terminals/telephones used.

ANCOM is working together with the European fellow authorities and with the European Commission to implement and improve the Regulation in force.