Today, June 23, 2006, the President of the National Regulatory Authority for Communications, Mr. Dan Cristian Georgescu, and the ANRC Vicepresident, Ms. Alexandrina Hirtan, met more than 70 representatives of the industry of communications and of postal services from South-Eastern Romania, during the Buzau session of the ”ANRC Caravan”.
This meeting was attended by representatives of the relevant companies in the counties of Braila, Buzau, Calarasi, Constanta, Dambovita, Giurgiu, Ialomita, Teleorman, Prahova and Tulcea. ANRC presented its regulatory priorities, focusing on the projects envisaged for this year. ”The cost-oriented tariffs to be imposed by ANRC, in July, for call termination in the networks of Orange and Vodafone, will give significant impetus to competition. This purpose will be served also by the carrier preselection procedure, which is to be available for the alternative providers starting next month. This service will allow a Romtelecom subscriber to choose, based on a contract, that certain categories of calls or all of the calls to be transmitted to the destination by an alternative provider, interconnected with Romtelecom, if the respective subscribers considers the alternative provider’s offer more advantageous”, Mr. Dan Georgescu declared.
ANRC further presented the industry the project by which – starting this year – public pay telephones will be installed in the remote rural localities with poor or no access to telephone services. The project, targeted at the localities with less than 400 inhabitants where the installation of telecentres in not a viable economic solution, was launched for public consultation this week. In South-Eastern Romania, there are already 8 telecentres: 5 in the county of Dambovita and one in each of the counties of Giurgiu, Teleorman and Tulcea. By the end of August 2006, 29 new telecentres are to be commissioned. The 8 operating telecentres serve approximately 14,820 villagers.
The open dialogue with the ANRC representatives identified the main problems encountered by the local industry and gave the Authority the occasion to make specific recommendations and to propose solutions. The small cable operators emphasized the problems they face as regards their access to the pillars of the large operators who own adequate infrastructure, such as Electrica or Romtelecom and required ANRC to speed up the adoption of the draft law regarding the infrastructure of the electronic communications networks, currently under approval.
During this event, the ANRC President also presented the evolution of the main indicators of the electronic communications market in South-Eastern Romania. The 10 counties of this region host 359 companies authorised to provide electronic communications networks and services, representing 15.24% of the total number of providers authorised at national level. The approximately 168 active Internet access providers currently hold more than 30,000 active connections. 40 of them offer broadband Internet services.
In the county of Buzau, there are 2 alternative fixed providers installing telephone lines and 10 active Internet access providers.
More than 119 active providers in the south-eastern region provide services of audio-visual programme re-transmission (CATV) to approximately 590,000 subscribers. Most CATV providers operate in the county of Teleorman – 24, followed by Constanta – 20 and Calarasi – 15 active providers.
The ANRC Caravan gives the Authority the occasion to identify the specific problems faced by the local providers of electronic communications services and to inform them directly on the actual support ANRC may offer in their operation and development on the Romanian communications market. During 2005, ANRC organised the first four editions of this Caravan in Constanta, Cluj, Iasi and Pitesti, during which 300 providers attended the meetings. The Buzau meeting marks the second 2006 session of the”ANRC Caravan” and will be followed by two other meetings, in the north-western and north-eastern regions of Romania.
The presentations of the ANRC President and Vicepresident are available here.