30.05.2003
On Thursday, May 29, 2003, the Vice-president of ANRC Alexandrina Hîrtan held a presentation in the opening of the conference entitled „Local Loop”, with the topic “Access to local loop – a decisive step towards the liberalization of electronic communications”
On this occasion, the Vice-president of ANRC insisted on the role access to the local loop holds in the increase of the broadband Internet connections number and in the development of services specific to the Information Society in general. Thus, by having access to the local loop, an alternative operator may offer the consumer broadband Internet services, even telephony, at a competitive price, through the same wires used for receiving the services from the dominant fixed telephony operator.
In this respect, Alexandrina Hîrtan showed that, in our country, a spectacular increase in the number of broadband connections has been registered lately, both in absolute figures and as percentage, which points out the increasing demand for this type of services. Thus, as it results from the data received by ANRC from the operators, the total number of dedicated Internet connections in the year 2003 is 3.65 times bigger than during the year 2001, whereas the number of dedicated broadband connections is 21.8 bigger, which means that the latter increased in the total number Internet access connections from 10.48% in 2001, to 62.68% in 2002.
“For this reason, ensuring the access to local loop owned by the dominant operator does not only imply the synchronization with certain verified international practices but also to respond to the spontaneous demand of the consumers from both the private and business sector. They cannot be artificially limited, when their businesses, their need to study, to work and to inform can be better met on-line,” said Alexandrina Hîrtan.
Alexandrina Hîrtan showed that the ANRC regulatory strategy in the local loop sector intends to reach a balance between two major desiderates: to facilitate the market entry of the new competitors, especially those that intend to extend their businesses at national scale, and to foster investments in infrastructure. „If the dominant operator has the obligation to provide access to its local loop, the operators that make use of a regional network may extend their coverage area in regions where the network of the dominant operator already exists, without having to build a parallel network. The small networks may compete, at a national level, from balanced positions, with the network of the dominant operator. Another advantage of the access to the local loop is that the newly entered operators can test the market reaction in one region before developing their own networks. Also, the access to the local loop increases the efficiency of the use of the existing loop, as the newly entered providers can offer immediately broadband services, even before the owner of the local loop offers this type of services,” showed the ANRC Vice-president.
Later on, in the „ Access to local loop” section of the conference, the Director of the Economic Regulatory Division of ANRC, Radu Tudorache, presented in detail the economic mechanisms on which the Authority bases its regulatory policy. On the local loop segment, ANRC has already adopted the decision through which, the market of the provision of unconditioned access, total or segmented, to local loop consisting in one pair of twisted metallic wires, for the purpose of providing broadband electronic communications services and publicly available telephony services at fixed points was designated as relevant, together with other three markets. These markets are currently submitted to analyses, based on which ANRC will designate the operators with significant market power. Later on, ANRC will impose these operators certain obligations meant to enhance competition on the electronic communications market.