Thursday, October 21, 2004, the President of the National Regulatory Authority for Communications, Ion Smeeianu, delivered a speech entitled “Development of Electronic Communications Sector – a Priority for ANRC” during the conference “New Trends in the IT and Telecommunications Development”, held on the occasion of Biz Days.
Mr. Ion Smeeianu emphasized the tremendous opportunities of development in the electronic communications market, highlighting the regulatory measures that drove to offer diversification, higher quality services and lower tariffs. Thus, the President pinpointed the guidelines of the ANRC activity in 2004, focusing on measures with high impact on the market, such as: unbundling of the local loop, identifying the specific retail markets, regulating the interconnection regime and implementing the mechanisms of universal service.
As well, Mr. Ion Smeeianu presented the communications market development regarding the number of subscribers for fixed and mobile telephony. Thus, in the first half of 2004 the six months data communicated by the operators indicated 8.35 million users of mobile telephony services and 4.53 million users for fixed telephony. “Although the fixed telephony sector did not register a similar spectacular growth, it is worth mentioning that, as compared to the general idling trend at international level, Romania still witnesses a slightly rising curve”, the ANRC President declared at the conference.
As for the traffic on the mobile telephony market, in the first six months of the current year, it represents already 83% of the traffic rate for the whole year 2003, and the number of minutes reached 2.87 billion. According to the operators’ reports, as compared to 2003, when 438 million SMS were sent, in the first six months of 2004 more than 413 million SMS were reported, i.e. 94% of last year’s total number of SMS. The number of multimedia messages tripled in the first half 2004, reaching 676,000 as compared to 200,000 in 2003.
The data regarding the natural persons’ behaviour of using the fixed and mobile telephony services, resulted from a study conducted in the period February-March, 2004, showed that, in 47.1% of the residences, at least one of the family members uses mobile telephony services.