Vodafone believes also that the amendment to the date of expiry will not determine any competitive advantage compared to its European peers, alleging that not only some National Regulatory Authorities, in view of the same situation, altered the date of the start of commercial operation (such as Belgium, Spain, Germany, Austria, Finland, United Kingdom and Italy) and/or extended the period of validity of licenses by a further 5-year period (for 20 years, for example in France and Italy), but also most “UMTS Licenses” allocated at European level are valid for a 20-year period.
As stated above, ANACOM, having weighted constrains in the market of network infrastructure equipment and of terminal equipment, accepted, by the end of 2001 and the end of 2002, postponements of the date of start of commercial operation of UMTS systems, having admitted on 10 February 2004 the possibility of reviewing periods of validity of issued licenses.
As regards periods of validity of rights of use for frequencies allocated in Europe, it is possible to confirm, in the light of CEPT data available at www.efis.dk (EFIS), the information indicated by Vodafone, although data for some countries are not coherent with EFIS (such as Germany and Sweden).
