The European Commission has reluctantly granted nine of fourteen requests from member states to postpone the use of the 800MHz band for LTE mobile broadband due to exceptional reasons. All member states originally agreed to do so at the start of 2013. The EC sees opening up the 800MHz band as essential to the increasing use of mobile broadband services. It argues that the introduction of a single telecom market as beneficial to improving services in Europe, as advances are being blocked for their consumers by individual countries.
The EC has agreed to postponements for Spain, Cyprus, Lithuania, Hungary, Malta, Austria, Poland, Romania and Finland. It refused derogations for Slovakia and Slovenia where the delays were due to the organisation of the authorisation process and not to exceptional circumstances preventing the availability of the band. Greece, Latvia and the Czech Republic require additional evaluation. Belgium and Estonia were late but have not asked for a derogation, while Bulgaria has notified the continued use of the band for public security and defence purposes.
