ANRC Consultative Council

On Friday, March 14, 2003, a new meeting of the Consultative Council of the National Regulatory Authority for Communications (ANRC) took place, bringing together the Regulations Commission and the Technical and Standardization Commission. The meeting agenda included: the identification of relevant markets regarding the leased lines, access to local loop and associated facilities, the identification of operators with significant power on the local loop access market, the termination of calls within the mobile networks, the authorisation of postal services, the survey for identifying the wholesale markets, the impact evaluation of the published rules, and the suggestions to improve the Consultative Council activity.

During the first session the participants discussed over the draft decision on the completion of the National Regulatory Authority for Communications President Decision no.136/2002 on the approval of the Rules on the identification of relevant markets within the electronic communications sector. The debates were accompanied by the reasons which initiated the above-mentioned draft, that were meant to underline the importance of creating and stimulating competition within the terminal segments market. The participants adopted the draft put forth by ANRC and the Authority is to issue a decision to be published in the Romanian Official Journal.

The following drafts submitted for debate were the Decisions regarding the interconnection to the public mobile telephony network operated by „Cosmorom” – S.A., „Mobifon” – S.A., „Orange România” – S.A., and „Telemobil” – S.A. All attendants to the meeting including the representatives of the above mentioned companies agreed to the main provisions of these drafts. As a result, these drafts shall be shortly published in the Romanian Official Journal.

The discussions during the section on the authorisation of postal services were meant to clarify and facilitate the adoption of a unitary position regarding the legislation within the scope of the postal services. The debates focused mainly on the two Decision drafts on the Procedure for the authorisation of the postal services providers and the Request to grant the individual license for the provision of postal services within the scope of the universal service. According to the provisions of these two projects, any commercial agent, legal person, who intends to provide postal services within the scope of the universal service is bound to send to ANRC a request for the granting of an individual license. Following the analysis of this request, the providers shall receive from ANRC an individual license for the provision of the above mentioned services. Part of these providers shall be directly designated as universal service providers, certain specific obligations being additionally imposed to them in order to ensure the availability of services to all the citizens in the country.

In order to ground the regulatory process on most complete and recent data on the status and evolution of the electronic communications in Romania, under the conditions of art.51 of Government Emergency Ordinance no.79/2002 on the general regulatory framework for communications, ANRC requested that a survey, that would provide the data necessary to conduct an analysis of the markets of the local loop access, the leased lines, and the facilities associated to the electronic communications networks, should be filled in. During the Consultative Council was raised the issue of the confidentiality of data that the operators would send ANRC as reply to this survey, and was established that such data shall only be made public as a general analysis of the Romanian communications market.

In order to increase the efficiency of the consultation procedures and the works of the Consultative Council, ANRC representatives suggested the establishment of specialised working groups, comprising representatives of all the institutions and companies that take part in the Consultative Council. These groups shall assist ANRC during the process of elaborating the regulations within the scope of the electronic communications and shall be actively involved in this process. „The meetings of these specialised working groups could be scheduled more frequently than the meetings of the Consultative Council, thus allowing ANRC to benefit from a permanent information flow from the operators and stimulating an active involvement in the consultation process, in order to adopt new regulations within the scope of the electronic communications and postal services, based upon real situations faced by the Romanian communications industry”, declared ANRC President, Ion Smeeianu.