ANCOM and the representatives of the telecommunication industry agreed today on the Authority’s Action Plan for 2011, as well as on the new provisions on the Universal Service implementation in the Romanian electronic communications sector.
In 2011, ANCOM will finalise the Study regarding the impact of 900MHz frequency band use for the supply of third generation electronic communication services using UMTS systems on mobile communication market competition, will assess the existence and the magnitude of the competition distortions in effect of the current allocation of the 900MHz band in the context of the liberalisation of its use, and will identify the optimum solutions for solving the identified competitive distortions.
As well, ANCOM will amend the secondary legislation in the radio spectrum field, by reviewing the procedure for the request and award of the licences for the use of radio frequencies and, depending on the Government’s strategy, will implement the measures required in view of the digital switchover.
Furthermore, in 2011, ANCOM will elaborate and submit to public consultation the Position Paper on the Regulatory Strategy for the Electronic Communications Sector for 2011-2015, a strategy which will create the framework for a higher transparency and predictability as regards the Authority’s decisions.
Once the Law on the infrastructure of electronic communications networks is adopted, ANCOM will exercise its new duties according to this normative act. ANCOM will organise national and local seminaries in order to inform the providers, the local authorities, the associations and other parties interested in aspects related to the implementation of this law.
Within the purpose of fostering competition, ANCOM will initiate the project on modelling efficient costs for a number of regulated services, including fixed and mobile call termination, and will open for allocation new national numbers for harmonised services of social value.
In order to promote the end-users’ interests, ANCOM will carry on implementing the regulations on the services within the scope of Universal Service in the field of electronic communications and postal services, and will initiate the procedures of designation of the Universal Service provider(s) for the provision of access to the public telephone network, at a fixed location, as well as of access to the public pay telephones. As well, the Authority will begin the process of implementation of the project on developing an online application to enable comparing the communications offers, as well as the project on measuring the quality technical parameters for the Internet access services.
During 2011, ANCOM will define the quality parameters for the retransmission of audio-visual media programme services, applicable in the relationship with the end-users, will elaborate a guide on the minimum provisions to be included in the contracts concluded between the electronic communications providers and the end-users in accordance with the legal provisions and will monitor the providers’ compliance with the obligation to adequately inform their users on the communications services they provide.
During today’s Consultative Council, ANCOM also adopted the new decision on the Universal Service implementation in the Romanian electronic communications sector. Thus, according to the new decision, the measure of ensuring the access to the public telephone network, at a fixed location, by means of telecentres, will be replaced with the measure of ensuring access and connection – at a fixed location – to the public telephone networks and of access – at a fixed location – to the publicly available telephone services, at the household level.
By this decision, ANCOM imposes new obligations on the universal Service providers in view of ensuring equivalent access conditions to these services for the disabled users as well, and amends the way of determining the net cost and its financing mechanism, the amounts necessary for financing the Universal Service following to be collected only after determining the net cost.
As regards the procedure on the designation of the Universal Service providers, ANCOM decided to maintain the designation general procedure, i.e. the open public tender procedure.