State-owned Radiocom in talks over 10 million-euro loan

Societatea Nationala de Radiocomunicatii (National Radiocommunications Company), a provider of communications and broadcasting services, is in talks to take out an approximately 10 million-euro loan to be used for payment of VAT and procurement of products and services for a project to build a telecom network, reveal the data available on the e-licitatie.ro (e-auction) portal.
The company intends to pay back the loan over two years, and the money should be used to pay VAT, for construction work and for the payment of rent for the construction of a Wi-Max network. WiMAX (Worldwide Interoperability for Microwave Access) is a standard backed by US group Intel, which allows providing high-speed Internet service via wireless technologies over an up to 65-kilometre radius. The company plans to build a national network using this technology based on a licence of the 3.6GHz-3.8GHz radio frequencies won in November 2008. The licensing fee stood at 2 million euros.
The network construction project was won by local Omnilogic company and is worth 39 million euros, with Radiocom having to come up with 5 million euros of this amount, according to the tender documentation.