The National Regulatory Authority for Communications (ANRC) submitted for public consultation the following projects, "Rules for Identifying the Relevant Markets in the Electronic Communications Sector" and "Rules for Conducting Market Analyses and Establishing the Significant Market Power". The texts of these two normative projects are available on the Internet page of ANRC (www.anrc.ro), and interested persons may send comments until November 4, 2002.
"ANRC will use these two rules to identify the operators with significant market power and, if necessary, will impose a set of obligations in order to prevent the abuse of dominant power and to promote competition", stated the Vice President of ANRC, Alexandrina Hirtan.
The Rules For Identifying the Relevant Markets In the Electronic Communications Sector set the criteria to identify the relevant markets whose characteristics request the imposing of regulation measures. The relevant market is defined after the determination of the product market and the geographical market. The relevant product market includes the groups of products that may be substituted from the point of view of their characteristics, price and use. Criteria used by ANRC in establishing the relevant market are: the extent to which request and offer can be substituted, the existence of barriers on entering the market, the market dynamics, the efficiency of applying the general competition legislation, and the existence of certain exclusive rights of the providers. The geographical relevant market includes the area where electronic communications services providers compete, and is defined in a similar manner as the relevant product market.
The above defined relevant markets are further analyzed based upon the Rules For Conducting Market Analyses and Establishing the Significant Market Power. Following the analysis, ANRC decides upon imposing, changing or withdrawing specific obligations of providers with significant market power, in order to ensure the real competition on the respective market. The providers with significant market power are able to act independently from their competitors, clients or consumers and they are identified based upon certain criteria, such as: market quota, number of competitors, price evolution and profit level, control over an infrastructure hard to duplicate, or technological advantage.
The obligations to be imposed by ANRC after conducting market analyses mainly refer to conditions for the new providers entering the market with respect to their interconnection and access to the networks of other operators, and are intended to prevent the possible difficulties encountered by the new operators on the liberalized electronic communications market, starting January 1, 2003.