Friday, May 28, 2004 the National Regulatory Authority for Communications submitted to public consultation the draft Decision on the designation of the Universal Service Provider in the field of electronic communications for the purpose of subsidizing the public telephone network access service and providing facilities in the case of non-payment of the telephone bill. Based on this project, ANRC will adopt individual decisions in order to designate all providers that offer public fixed telephone network or public mobile telephone network access services as universal service providers. Also, the document comprises a set of facilities intended to ensure access to telephone services to the disadvantaged categories of users.
According to this draft decision, all the families with a monthly net income per family member lower than ROL 2,460,000 will have the possibility to request their providers the subsidy for access to telephone services. In return, the provider will have the right to compensate the net cost of the provision of these subsidies based on the universal service financing mechanisms, so that the provision of access to telephone services for the disadvantaged categories of users would not generate losses for the respective companies.
Moreover, the respective families will also benefit from a series of facilities applicable in case of non-payment of the telephone bill, which shall be expressly provided for in the contracts. In this respect, in accordance with the provisions of this draft decision, the interests, increases or penalties related to late payment shall not exceed 0.15% of the owed amounts per day. Also, disconnection from the telephone network shall not take place before 90 days since the day the service is suspended and the subscriber shall be able to make or receive those calls that do not incur a charge to him and shall not owe any tariffs to the universal service provider, during the entire period of service suspension. Afterwards, the reconnection shall be made free of charge, but only after the subscriber has paid the amounts owed that caused the service disconnection, together with the afferent interests, increases or penalties.
The draft Decision on the designation of the Universal Service Provider in the field of electronic communications for the purpose of subsidizing the public telephone network access service and providing facilities in case of non-payment of the telephone bill is available for consultation on the website of ANRC. All interested persons are invited to send their comments until June 7, 2004. Comments and recommendations may be sent by mail to the ANRC headquarters at 14 Libertatii Blvd., Bucharest 5, or may be submitted directly to the ANRC registration office or at the territorial office of ANRC located in the nearest municipality. Comments may also be sent by fax at: +40 21 307 54 02 or by e-mail at: consultare@anrc.ro.