The National Authority for Management and Regulation in Communications (ANCOM) submits to public consultation a new draft decision on the Universal Service implementation in the Romanian electronic communications sector as a result of the amendment of the National Strategy in the field.
The amendments proposed by the draft decision in accordance with the new strategy mainly concerned replacing the measure of ensuring the access to the public telephone network, at a fixed location, by means of telecentres, 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.
Studies conducted by ANCOM showed that almost 100% of the total population and households in Romania are covered with mobile public telephone networks. Also, the homezone access services provided over these networks are substitutable with the access services provided at a fixed location over fixed public networks, due to both similar functional characteristics and comparable tariffs.
The connection made available by the Universal Service provider must ensure publicly available telephone services at a fixed location, fax communications and Internet functional access. Due to the growth in traffic volume and the complexity of the transmitted content, ANCOM deemed necessary to define the Internet functional access service as the service allowing for a data transfer download speed of at least 144 kbps, instead of 33 kbps.
Moreover, ANCOM identified a series of obligations that may be imposed on the Universal Service providers in order to ensure equivalent access conditions to these services for the disabled users as well. Therefore, ANCOM may impose on the Universal Service providers the obligation to send the persons with sight disabilities, upon request or free of charge, the contractual terms for the provision of services, the simple invoices or other promotional materials printed with larger fonts, in Braille language, or by electronic mail in a format compatible with the majority of document reading programmes, to ensure easy access to its own working points for the persons with locomotor disabilities, to ensure access via SMS or text-relay to the single emergency call number, to ensure special tariff packages for the persons with speaking or hearing disabilities, to place public pay telephones in such a way as to make them permanently accessible for the persons with locomotor or sight disabilities, or to ensure free access to the directory enquiry service for the persons who suffer of sight disabilities and thus are not able to consult the subscriber directory.
ANCOM proposes, as well, the amending of the way the net cost and its financing mechanism are determined, the amounts necessary for financing the Universal Service being therefore collected only after the net cost of the provision of services within the scope of Universal Service is determined.
As regards the procedure for designating the Universal Service providers, ANCOM decided to maintain the designation procedure by means of an open public tender and changed the maximum period for which a Universal Service provider is designated, extending it to 10 years, whereas the concrete period is to be established within each procedure to be organised.
In order to achieve the objectives set out in the National Strategy on the Universal Service implementation in the electronic communications sector, at end-2009, ANCOM conducted a study on the telephone services coverage throughout the country. As well, between 19 March – 19 April 2010, all persons interested in the provision or use of electronic communications services within the scope of Universal Service were offered the possibility to answer a questionnaire regarding the most suitable methods for implementing Universal Service in Romania. The answers to this questionnaire were taken into consideration in the elaboration of the draft decision. Upon adopting the decision, and based on certain analyses, ANCOM will organise tenders for the designation of the Universal Service providers only in those localities and/or only for those services for which the market did not succeed – through its own mechanisms – to satisfy the demand.
The draft decision is available for consultation on the ANCOM website, here. The interested persons are invited to send their comments and suggestions, by 19.11.2010, at the ANCOM headquarters in 2 Delea Noua Street, Bucharest 3, or directly to the Registry. Comments and recommendations may also be sent by fax to +40 732 845 404 or by e-mail to consultare@ancom.org.ro.