Technological Neutrality Stimulates Investment in the Electronic Communications Sector

Wednesday, September 8, 2004, the President of the National Regulatory Authority for Communications, Ion Smeeianu, attended the conference „450 Mhz Digitalisation”. In the opening session, the President held a presentation entitled „Technological Neutrality –ANRC Regulatory Approach”.

Technological neutrality stimulates investment in the market of electronic communications, services-based and the infrastructure-based competition and facilitates the usage of services based on the latest technologies. The secondary legislative frame created by ANRC provided for the simultaneous existence of various technologies on the Romanian market of electronic communications, such as twisted metallic pairs, coaxial cable, optical fibre, DECT, CDMA, ensuring access to complex ISDN, NGN, IP or 3G services.

Based on the principle of technological neutrality, the standard notification forms which have to be submitted by the persons interested to enter the electronic communications market make no reference to the technology to be used by the would-be provider. Thus, each of the over 2000 authorised providers may choose the adequate type of technology when entering the market, without undergoing specific regulations.

At present, on the Romanian market of mobile communications one operator uses the CDMA 2000 technology, two operators use GSM 900 and one – DCS 1800, while the total market share of the four mobile telephony operators reaches 44%. In 2001 Romania became the first European country which implemented the CDMA technology, thus enabling the Romanian users to have access to Internet services through public mobile networks, at a speed exceeding 153 kbps.

The existence of various technologies on the Romanian market has stimulated the development of the main types of services, encouraging users’ growing access to telephony and Internet services. Thus, the number of users of mobile telephony services increased from 5.11 million in 2002 to 7.039 million by the end of 2003, while the number of subscriptions for Internet services doubled within the same period, reaching 906,000 by the end of 2003.

“The regulatory activity is not determined by the technologies in use, but by the companies’ competition potential. With a view to encouraging these companies, the entry barriers for different types of technologies or signal processing methods have been eliminated”, declared the ANRC President at the conference.