Irish telecoms regulator the Commission for Communications Regulation (ComReg) has published an Information Notice aimed at providing an update on its COVID-19 temporary licensing framework – under which licences are currently due to expire on 1 October 2021. The Information Notice also seeks to provide ‘information relevant to the consideration of any further COVID-19 temporary spectrum licensing framework beyond 1 October 2021, including next steps and envisaged consultation timelines regarding same’.
According to the regulator, having initially introducing the temporary licensing framework in March 2021, it has now outlined the process by which it envisages determining whether its extension may be warranted beyond the current expiry date, ‘in light of the prospect of continued Government measures to address COVID-19 and the impact this may have on relevant network operators’. As a next formal step, the regulator has called for the county’s mobile operators to submit a joint or common request which would: set out the specific details of the joint/common request indicating any elements of the existing Temporary ECS Licensing framework that ought to be changed (if any) and the reasons for same; and provide sufficiently detailed information based on the updated and prevailing COVID-19 considerations at that time to support a request for any further Temporary ECS Licensing framework. ComeReg has set a deadline of 6 August for the joint/common request to be made.