5G Arrives in Montenegro for The First Time

It’s late January and an auction is being held for the right to launch Montenegro’s first commercial 5G services in parts of Podgorica. Crnogroski Telecom won the contract with a bid of $8m, and they are now putting that money to good use installing the equipment in the Tolosi, Dalmatinska and Elastik areas of the Capital City.

The aim is that by the end of May the 5G network will cover the most important areas of Podgorica and by the beginning of the Summer it will cover hot spots along the coast, in order to capitalise on an increasing tourist market (which now is responsible for around 20% of Montenegro’s GDP).

Regardless of the mobile package that people have, the network will be available to all of Telekom’s customers as long as their mobile is 5G compliant. They will be able to handle 5G traffic on the Telekom network, and by the start of Summer, this should be entirely possible on both Samsung & Apple devices.

The 5G capabilities in Montenegro are miles ahead of their Balkan counterparts such as Serbia, Bosnia-Herzegovina & Albania, but are miles behind where they want to be in comparison to their Western Neighbours. Early signs are very promising, however, and the investment is certainly there.

During the auction, only 220mhz of the spectrum was sold, but with EKIP (Agency for Electronic communications and postal services) due to auction more by the end of the year, other operators should be able to enter the market and have less of a reliance purely on 4G.

10.03.2022