Starting from Monday, October 2, 2006, the electronic communications providers who intend to start activity in the field may commence once they have sent the notification to ANRC. The same procedure shall apply to postal service providers, starting from December 31, 2006. These new rules on the market entry of the electronic communications providers came into force on Monday, October 2, 2006, upon the publication of the Emergency Ordinance on amending and completing certain normative acts in the fields of electronic communications and of postal services in the Romanian Official Journal.
The amendments brought by this ordinance to the regulatory framework in the communications field are meant to prepare the Romanian market for accession. Thus, the ordinance sets the grounds for opening the market of postal services to natural persons, starting from December 31. Natural persons will be able to become providers of postal services and will benefit from the same rights as the companies currently operating in the field. The new regulations reduce the answering time during the authorisation procedure, providing the Romanian market with the flexibility and the capacity to rapidly adjust to the European business environment.
The simplified authorisation procedure removes individual licences in the field of postal services, therefore all the postal services (within or outside the scope of Universal Service) will be provided based on a single authorisation regime.
Moreover, starting from December 31, 2006, the procedure for calculating the annual monitoring tariff to be paid to ANRC by the providers of electronic communications and postal services shall be amended to ensure a level budgetary exercise throughout the year. As well, in order to foster the development of small enterprises, the Authority will have the possibility to exempt from the payment of the monitoring tariff the providers having a turnover below a certain level, which is to be established on an annual basis. The providers still have the possibility to choose that their monitoring tariff be determined based on the revenues resulted from the activity in the fields of electronic communications and of postal services.
For further details on the amendments of the legislative framework in the communications field, the full text of the Emergency Ordinance is available here, on the ANRC website.