ANRC Launches the Annual Report

On Friday, December 19, 2003, during a press conference, the National Regulatory Authority for Communications launched the Annual Report for 2003.

In the opening of the conference, the ANRC President Ion Smeeianu pointed out the main achievements of this year, underlining that the role of the Authority was to guarantee the emergence and development of competitive relationships on the electronic communications market. The activity report presents in detail the first steps in this direction, marking the changes that have taken place on the electronic communications market since the liberalization, since the entry into force of the new legislative framework and the new regulations. The document provides information about the work of the ANRC specialists, the necessary stages for ensuring the natural evolution of the liberalization process: the gradual replacement of the monopoly with the mechanisms of a competitive market.

The ANRC Vice-president, Alexandrina Hîrtan, presented the results of the activity of ANRC, outlining that Romania is the first European country that has implemented the new regulatory framework. “The year 2003 represented a pioneering period for ANRC, when a series of measures which will come into effect in the near future were adopted and implemented. The Authority conducted a very laborious work in order to identify the relevant wholesale markets within the electronic communications domain, to designate the operators with significant power and to establish a clear, functional interconnection regime which resulted into a reference offer for the interconnection with the public telephony network, offer which has been recently modified by ANRC to cover the intelligent networks services and call transit services – indirect interconnection,” showed Alexandrina Hîrtan.

During 2004 ANRC will primarily focus on the finalization of the draft Decision regarding the principles and prerequisites of the reference offer for unbundled access to local loop, and will initiate the implementation of the universal service in the electronic communications domain, as well as on the designation of universal service providers within the postal services sector. Next year, ANRC will identify the relevant retail markets and the operators with significant power on these markets and will impose specific obligations on these operators. At the same time, ANRC will focus on providing information to the end-users with respect to their rights in relation with the providers of electronic communications services and postal services, as well as on user protection activities and control and survey activities.

The entire electronic version of the ANRC annual report can be consulted on the ANRC Internet page.