Thursday, September 21, 2006, during a press conference held in Alba Iulia, the President of the National Regulatory Authority for Communications (ANRC), Mr. Dan Cristian Georgescu, and the ANRC Vice-President, Ms. Alexandrina Hirtan, announced that the providers of electronic communications and of postal services will soon benefit from simpler market entry rules. Prior to the meeting with the local mass media, the ANRC management met more than 70 industry representatives in North-Western Romania.
If, so far, an electronic communications provider had to wait 7 days before starting its activity as an authorised provider, the coming into force of Government Emergency Ordinance on the amendment and completion of certain normative acts in the field of electronic communications and of postal services, enables any person or company to start effective operation once the notification has been sent to ANRC. This procedure will also be available for the providers of postal services. The normative act has been adopted by the Government on September 13, 2006, and is to be published by the end of the month.
Moreover, the market of postal services will open for natural persons. Such persons will be able to become providers of postal services and will benefit from the same rights as the companies now operating in the market. The new regulations provide for a faster authorisation procedure, so that the Romanian market could be flexible and prepared enough to react to the European business environment. Due to the simplified authorisation regime, individual licences will no longer be necessary for the provision of postal services, therefore all the postal services (within or outside the scope of Universal Service) will be provided under a single authorisation regime.
The method of establishing the annual monitoring tariff to be paid to ANRC by the providers of electronic communications and of postal services will be modified to ensure a level budgetary exercise throughout a year. As well, in order to foster the development of small enterprises, the Authority will have the possibility to exempt the providers that register a turnover below a certain level (which is to be established yearly) from the payment of the monitoring tariff. For a proper calculation of the tariff owed by the persons who have not been authorised as providers during a whole calendar year, the new Ordinance provides the possibility that the monitoring tariff be charged according only to the limited period in a calendar year during which a person held its capacity as a provider. The providers will continue benefiting from the possibility to choose that their monitoring tariff be calculated based on the revenues resulted from activities in the field of electronic communications or of postal services.
During this event attended by more than 70 representatives of the relevant companies in the counties of Alba, Arad, Bihor, Bistrita Nasaud, Cluj, Maramures, Mures, Satu Mare and Salaj, the ANRC President presented the development of the main indicators of the electronic communications market in the north-western region of Romania. The 9 counties in this region host 409 companies authorised as providers of electronic communications networks or services, i.e. 16.12% of the total number of authorised providers in the country.
3 alternative providers of fixed telephone services install telephone lines in the county of Alba. The whole north-western region has 256 Internet providers, 139 of which offer broadband access services. The latter reported a number of 89,000 connections.
This region also registers 155 active providers of services of audio-visual programme retransmission through CATV, who reported a number of 552,000 subscribers. The county of Maramures features the highest number of CATV providers (28), followed by Alba (22 active providers) and Salaj (21 providers).
The ANRC Caravan gives the Authority the opportunity to discuss with the representatives of the local industry and to inform them on the actual support ANRC may offer in their operation and development on the Romanian communications market.
The presentations of the ANRC President and Vicepresident on the occasion of the Alba Iulia ANRC Caravan are available here.