Wednesday, November 17, 2004, the Vice-president of the National Regulatory Authority for Communications, Alexandrina Hirtan, participated in the Cable Communications Convention, held between November 16 – 17, 2004.
The ANRC Vice-president was invited to deliver a speech entitled “New services on the market. Video-Data-Voice”, during which she presented the advantages of the CATV operators on the market of integrated services.
Based on the principle of technological neutrality, and providing for competitive interconnection tariffs, the regulatory frame created by ANRC ensures equal treatment for all the providers in the electronic communications market. Thus, all the authorised cable TV operators who intend to provide fixed telephone services shall observe the same regulations as any other fixed telephone services providers.
A competitive advantage of the CATV operators is the possibility to offer integrated packages, including data, video and voice services, which enhances the growth potential of this market segment. Furthermore, concerning the cable TV service, by the end of 2003 there were approximately 10 million subscribers worldwide, of which 5.9 million in Europe and 2.7 in the USA. The estimates indicate that, by 2007, their total number will reach 19 million and the amount of the operators’ incomes will exceed USD6 billion.
The ANRC official pointed out that a solution which the Romanian cable operators have already adopted in order to overcome the obstacles regarding the required investment level is the implementation of VoIP technologies, which are still at the beginning in Europe.
“The integrated service packages offer multiple advantages both for end-users and for operators. Thus, an end-user will pay one single bill for these services, will negotiate the agreement with one single operator, and will have a greater control over the expenditures for communications services, while the CATV operator will be able to charge more efficient tariffs while providing services through the existing framework. Moreover, according to global market analyses, the low degree of satisfaction with the telephone services offered by the traditional providers, as well as the fact that most of the cable telephony offers are cheaper than the telephone services offered by other providers, played an important role in the development of the CATV market”, the ANRC Vice-president declared.
This edition (the ninth) of the Cable Communications Convention approaches issues such as: unauthorised access to cable communications networks, new services, equipments and technological solutions on the CATV market.