Tuesday, December 21, 2004, during the press conference organised at the headquarters of the National Regulatory Authority for Communications, the ANRC President, Ion Smeeianu, pointed out that – by the end of the first semester of 2004 – there were 1169 companies authorised to provide public fixed electronic communications networks. Among the 183 companies authorised to provide telephone services through public fixed networks, 50 companies actually provide telephone services, 20 providers offer telephone services through their own networks, and 32 companies – through the access networks of other providers.
Although the electronic communications market was liberalised only two years ago, effective alternatives have already appeared for the fixed telephone services provided by the former monopoly provider. By the end of June 2004, 49 alternative providers operated on the market, as compared to 36 alternative providers operating at the end of 2003. Concerning the category of services provided, 16 operators actually provided national call services, 13 – fixed-to-mobile calls, and 39 – international calls.
The number of subscribers for fixed telephone services registered a slightly growing trend, from 4,215,235 subscribers by the end of 2002 (the date of the thorough liberalisation of the telecommunications market in Romania) to 4,540,429 subscribers on June 30 2004. Thus, the growth rate of the total number of subscribers between December 31, 2002 and June 30, 2004 reached 7.7%. As well, the “digitalisation” chapter has witnessed significant growth: by the end of the first half of 2004, the percentage of subscribers connected to digital telephone switches was 76.46%, as compared to 71.90%, in January 2003.
In the first half of 2004, the total number of calls originated in the public fixed telephone networks in Romania amounted to 5,750.4 million minutes, i.e. 47.06% of the total traffic in 2003. As regards voice traffic, the originated international traffic registered significant growth (on June 30, 2004, this traffic category represented 64% of the total traffic for 2003). This trend was also registered in case of the traffic originated in the public fixed telephone networks to other public fixed telephone networks, which doubled during the first 6 months of 2004, compared to the end of last year, as a consequence of the growing number of alternative providers.