Telenor Bulgaria

Company Overview

Telenor Bulgaria is the second largest mobile carrier operating in Bulgaria. The company was founded as "Cosmo Bulgaria Mobile" in 2001 and operated under the brand name "Globul" to 2014. It was owned by Greek operator OTE from 2001 until its purchase by Telenor Group in 2013. The company remained a wholly owned subsidiary of Telenor Group until March 2018 when a deal was struck with PPF Group to sell its central and eastern europe assets to the investment fund.

The company operates 2G GSM services over the 900 MHz band with coverage claimed at 99.98% of the Bulgarian population. 3G UMTS services were launched in September 2006 over the B1 (2100 MHz) band, upgraded to DC-HSPA+ in June 2015 providing data rates up to 42 Mbps. In December 2015 Telenor Bulgaria launched 4G LTE over the B3 (1800 MHz) band), a first for the country. The company is operating LTE-A 2C services using existing B3 with B1 (2100 MHz) after receiving an additional 15 MHz of paired spectrum in March 2017. VoLTE was implemented June 2018.

Telenor Bulgaria 5G

In May 2019 the Communications Regulation Commission (CRC) allocated spectrum in the 3440 to 3540 MHz band to Telenor on a temporary basis for the purposes of conducting 5G testing. Telenor Bulgaria conducted its first 5G test in July 2019 with the country’s first 5G-supported medical examination.