On Wednesday, April 16, 2003, Ion Smeeianu, President of the National Regulatory Authority for Communications (ANRC), took part in the opening of the 6th edition of the Communications Day, event organized within CERF 2003. The event gathered electronic communications and information technology companies and decision making governmental representatives and included discussions on themes such as: competition on the telecommunications market, new technologies for telecom applications, current trends within the IT&C sector, and the new security systems for electronic communications.
Present at this event together with the Minister of Communications and Information Technology, Dan Nica, the President of the Commission for Communications and Information Technology within the Deputies Chamber, Varujan Pambuccian, as well as other leaders of Romanian telephony companies, the President of ANRC held a speech on the “Culture of competition within the telecommunications industry”.
The President of ANRC shortly overviewed the companies that have notified the Authority with the purpose of entering the electronic communications market, specifying that, only three months after liberalization, the interest shown by companies is encouraging and states the great potential of this market. A total of 1107 companies have notified ANRC so far and, among these, 952 have received standard certificates confirming their right to provide specific electronic communications networks and services. A number of 125 companies received the right to provide telephony services on the Romanian electronic communications market as follows: 121 companies will provide telephony services through public fixed networks, 61 – through mobile public networks, 7- through satellite. Among the companies that will provide telephony services through public fixed networks, 92 will enter the local calls segment, 102 the national calls segment and 114 will provide international calls. Moreover, a total number of 51 companies expressed their intention of entering the ISDN services segment and 48 companies will install public pay phones. From the authorized companies, 335 have the right to provide other types of services, apart from telephony. Thus, the Authority has registered so far 248 data transmissions providers, 247 Internet access providers, 49 mobile professional radio-communications providers and 7 radio-paging providers.
The interest shown by the business community in the telephony market is also reflected in the number of licenses for the use of numbering resources allotted so far: a total of 18 companies have received such licenses. The President of ANRC added that the 25 million numbers granted by ANRC clearly indicate that the Romanian telephony market can hold at least 20 million users.
The information presented confirms there is competition on the telephony services market. Under these circumstances, it is the role of ANRC to coordinate and stimulate the development of the market under fair competition. „The Principle guiding our activity is that of a minimal intervention from our part in order to allow the companies full creativity and liberty of expression. It is, we believe, the only way in which all of us will gain. And, as the topic of this first session of the Communications Day is “The culture of competition”, I would like to conclude by saying that all arguments that I have presented here, today, completely demonstrate one thing: the Romanians’ appetite for communications is matched by a real effervescence of the profile companies”, stated the President of ANRC.
The presentation of the President of ANRC, is available on ANRC Internet page.