31 January 2012
Following completion of the European consultation, ANCOM has finalised and communicated to all the active fixed and mobile telephony providers from Romania the new maximum tariffs they may charge for call termination on their individual networks. The maximum tariffs will be submitted to a two-phase cut, by more than 30%, in 2012.
Thus, starting 1 March 2012, the maximum tariff which the six mobile telephony operatorsidentified as having significant market power – Cosmote, Orange, RCS&RDS, Romtelecom, Telemobil and Vodafone – will charge for the services of call termination on mobile telephone networks will be 4.05 eurocents per minute. The second cut will take place as of 1 September 2012, when the maximum tariff to be charged will be 3.07 eurocents/minute.
The maximum interconnection tariffs in view of call termination charged by the 51 fixed telephony operators identified as having significant market power will originally decrease to 0.82 eurocents/minute as of 1 March 2012. As of 1 July 2012, these will further drop to 0.67 eurocents/minute. The interconnection tariffs charged by the fixed telephony operators will no longer be differentiated by times of day.
The other remedies established for both markets, i.e. call termination at a fixed location and call termination at a mobile location remain unchanged. These remedies are: the obligation of transparency, the obligation of allowing access to, and use of, certain specific network elements and of the associated infrastructure, the obligation of non-discrimination and the obligation of price control (including the obligation to maintain the symmetry of the termination rates).
The rates established by ANCOM have been benchmarked against termination rates in other European countries, set based on the avoidable long-run incremental costs (LRIC), associated to the provision of termination services. ANCOM will impose new cuts of the interconnection tariffs as a result of the development of similar models for modelling the costs of Romanian operators, a process which has already been begun by ANCOM and most probably is to be completed at end-2012.
According to the statistical data reported by the providers, the electronic communications market was worth EUR 1.7 billion (RON 7.3 billion) at mid-2011. The revenues obtained by the mobile telephony operators from Romania from the services of voice call termination amounted to EUR 0.2 billion (RON 0.85 billion), accounting for 11.7% of the electronic communications market total value, whereas the fixed telephony operators obtained EUR 0.05 billion (RON 0.2 billion) from the services of voice call termination, which means 2.7% of the electronic communications market total value.
The termination rate is the cost of a call originated on an operator’s network and terminated on another operator’s network, paid by the operator of the originating network to the operator of the terminating network. This cost is included in the tariff paid by the originating end-user. Charging excessive termination rates as compared to the costs may harm competition in the entire telephony market because this is a tool whereby operators with a large number of subscribers can prevent the development of smaller operators.
