Today, December the 7th, 2005, the President of the National Regulatory Authority for Communications, Dan Cristian Georgescu, presented the main regulatory endeavours of ANRC in 2005, as well as some of the Authority’s priorities for the next year, during the opening session of the Mobile Communications Award Gala 2005.
The President of ANRC showed that the most important regulatory measure taken in 2005 in view of competition development has been the cost orientation of Romtelecom interconnection tariffs. This measure will lead to a larger diversity and higher quality of the offers dedicated to the fixed telephony consumers, resulting in lower tariffs for calls, increased traffic and, indirectly, an increased number of fixed telephony subscribers.
? The interconnection tariffs charged by Romtelecom are currently among the highest in Europe and the reason for the operator refusing to give up these tariffs is that they are means of keeping competitors at a distance. ANRC imposed Romtelecom to charge cost oriented tariffs, allowing the operator to cover its costs, and also imposed a profitability margin of 15.24%, among the highest at European level, larger than in Denmark, France, Ireland, Italy, Spain, Sweden and even Poland”, Dan Georgescu declared.
He also stated that, in reality, by means of the decrease in incomes obtained from interconnection, Romtelecom only looses those incomes that are currently obtained on an unjustified basis, by charging tariffs that are not cost oriented and are, in fact, paid by each citizen from its own incomes.
ANRC welcomes the decision of the Board of Directors of Romtelecom to invest 500 million Euros in the NGN type network, announced today, during the event, by the Minister of Communications and Information Technology, Zsolt Nagy, also a member in the Board of Directors of Romtelecom. ? Once more, this fact proves that a decrease in interconnection tariffs does not affect the investment plans of the fixed telephony operator”, Dan Georgescu declared.
The President of ANRC also stated that, among the state institutions with responsibilities in the communications market, there exists an excellent collaboration and a permanent coordination, to the extent that legislation in force is observed and the necessity to separate the regulatory function from the function of managing the state owned shares in the companies present of the market is met.