- EC intervenes on Czech MVNO regulation; Cosmote signs content agreement with BBC Studios.
- Croatia: Hrvatski Telecom secured a four-year deal to broadcast Croatian football until the end of the 2025–2026 season. The operator paid €36m for the package, giving it exclusive rights to the first and second tiers of men’s Croatian football, alongside the Croatian Football Cup and Super Cup. It also takes on the rights to the women’s top tier and cup finals, as well as coverage for youth levels across under-17, under-19, and under-21 football.
- Czech Republic: the European Commission (EC) ordered Czech regulator Český telekomunikační úřad (ČTÚ) to withdraw plans to impose wholesale access for third parties on mobile virtual network operators (MVNO) in the country. ČTÚ originally notified the EC of its draft measure in late-November 2021, citing high mobile prices in the Czech Republic (CR) and that operators are “unable to offer competitive services due to allegedly unfavourable wholesale access conditions”. ČTÚ proposed to oblige the largest mobile operators — T-Mobile CR, Telefónica CR, and Vodafone CR — to provide national roaming to all operators. Closing the investigation, the EC said the draft measure is “not sufficiently justified since it does not sufficiently take into account current and likely short- to mid-term market developments”.
- Poland: T-Mobile Poland partnered with mobile payment provider platform SkyCash to enable users to pay for public transport tickets via their phones. The service is now available in 69 cities and towns with plans to roll out similar functionality for parking services in the near future.
- Greece: Cosmote signed an exclusive agreement with BBC Studios to secure more than 400 hours of annual content for its subscribers. The deal runs until 2024.
- Hungary: Magyar Telecom reported it had built 401,000 new optical access points and upgraded 40,000 cable access points to Gigabit capability. According to the OpCo, this takes its Gigabit coverage to more than three million homes and businesses — meaning 69% of its network is capable of “theoretical” Gigabit speeds. It anticipates “vigorous” continued Gigabit network growth during 2022, having spent more than HUF 300bn (€8m) on the development of infrastructure throughout the last six years. Additionally, it reported the disconnection of copper networks in 100 areas in 2021.
