ANRCTI and EcoTic supplemented the equipment of 26 telecentres installed as part of the Universal Service Programme, by donation of 50 reconditioned computers. On Wednesday, December 12, 2007, the President of the National Regulatory Authority for Communications and Information Technology, Mr. Dan Cristian Georgescu, together with Mr. Valentin Negoita – President of EcoTic and Mr. Ionel Branga – Commercial Executive Director of Radiocom, donated the first two computers of this lot to the telecentre in Catiasu, the county of Buzau.
”Due to the common initiative of ANRCTI and EcoTic, in the next few weeks, 50 reconditioned computers will reach 26 of the telecentres installed as part of the national Universal Service Programme. For this donation, we have selected those telecentres that operate in or by schools and kindergartens, in order to open more opportunities to the children, such as to study computer science, to communicate on-line and to navigate the Internet”, the ANRCTI President, Mr. Dan Cristian Georgescu, declared.
”Our initiative of providing rural schools with PCs collected and reconditioned by EcoTic comes in line with the objectives of the European Directive 96/2002. In this respect, the Directive emphasizes the importance of preventing the disposal of electrical and electronic appliance, and, moreover, the need to reuse, recycle and recover such equipment, by any means. Beside the ecological scope, our initiative engages social responsibility, aiming to provide ITC access to the users in the rural area, which enhances the efforts of reducing the digital gap between the rural and the urban area”, the EcoTic President, Mr. Valentin Negoita, added.
”We wished that, together with our partners, we should help people who could only dream of learning and communication before. Thus, we found great satisfaction in rallying our forces and in bringing about such joy, as communication is vital to personal development. Providing access to communication to as many Romanians as possible is extremely important and the 198 Radiocom telecentres are a solution for the people in communities with limited access to telephony and Internet services to stay connected to the latest news, as well as to benefit from equal access to information”, Mr. Ionel Branga, Commercial Executive Director of Radiocom, declared.
The telecentre in Catiasu is installed inside the primary school of the village and is managed by the local priest, who skilfully oversees the villagers’ children using the Internet and advises them to use the Internet for homework research. The Internet connection for the two additional PCs donated is to be made by Radiocom, the provider who installed this telecentre.
So far, within the national Universal Service Programme, 295 telecentres have been installed, out of a total number of more than 600. The programme for the installation of telecentres in localities with limited or no access to telephone services was initiated by ANRCTI in 2004. By now, ANRCTI has organised 6 tenders for the installation of telecentres in 461 localities. In December, the last tender, for approximately 240 localities, is to be launched.