“The 2621 companies who chose to enter the liberalised market of electronic communications indicate that the investors are highly enthusiastic and optimistic about the telephony market in Romania”, Mr. Ion Smeeianu, President of the National Regulatory Authority for Communications declared on Wednesday, February 9, during the round table “IT&C Forecast 2005”.
Concerning the fixed-line telephony services, by the end of 2004, 50 operators actually provided such services: 32 – through other providers’ access networks, 20 – through their own network, of which 18 even reported subscribers of their own. At that moment, the number of subscribers of the alternative operators reached 21,659. “Recently, one of the alternative operators has announced 40,000 subscribers, i.e. twice as many compared to the total number of subscribers reported by the alternative operators six months ago, which gives us reasons to believe that the following lot of statistical data provided by the operators will prove a spectacular growth in the sector. I think we could forecast, without exaggerating, more than 100,000 alternative telephony subscribers, by the end of 2005”, Mr. Smeeianu declared.
On this occasion, the ANRC President also announced that, upon public consultation, the authority completed the action plan for 2005, which will be on the agenda of the Consultative Council session organised by ANRC, on February 15, 2005.
The round table was organised as a consultation session assembling representatives of the authorities as well as of the industry, which debated on the most relevant issues of the sector. Among the participants in this event, we count: Mr. Zsolt Nagy, Minister of Communications and Information Technology, Mr. Varujan Pambuccian, President of the Commission for Communications and Information Technology of the Chamber of Deputies, Mr. Leonard Orban, Chief Negotiator with the European Union, Mr. Bogdan Badea, Director of the Internal Market Negotiations Section of the Ministry of European Integration, as well as representatives of 150 companies operating in the IT&C field. 40 representatives of the participating companies took the floor, pointing out important issues on which the state institutions should focus in the near future.