“Online application for comparing the communications offers intended for the end-users”
Sector Operational Programme “Increase of Economic Competitiveness” – co-financed by the European Regional Development Fund –
“Investments for your future”
09.10.2013
The visitors of the Internet & Mobile World 2013 event, taking place between 9 and 10 October at Romexpo, have the opportunity to make comparisons among more than 3.5 million offers of fixed and mobile telephony and broadband Internet available on the online application for comparing the telecom offers developed by ANCOM – Veritel.ro.
On www.veritel.ro the users may find the most advantageous offers for them in three simple steps: they choose the category of services, insert their consumption estimates and are provided with a list of 25 tariff plans corresponding to the inputted criteria, ranked in order of cost. When the results are displayed, other relevant details are also published, such as the minimum contract duration, the termination penalties or information on the available promotions.
In order to generate the list of the most advantageous telecom offers, in terms of total cost, that correspond to the criteria inputted by the user, the application works on a complex algorithm and mainly achieves the following operations: (1) selects from the total offers those offers which are in line with the criteria inputted by the user and containing all the services for which the user estimated a consumption; (2) ranks the list of the selected offers strictly in the ascending order of the total cost; (3) displays the list of the first 25 costs.
The fact that there is competition in the Romanian electronic communications market enables the users to choose from a broad range of providers and services of telephony and Internet access, with various price and package structures, which are difficult to be compared directly. In order to support the users in making informed and correct decisions when they choose their provider or the tariff package most suitable for their consumption behaviour, ANCOM adopted Decision no. 77/2009 on the obligations of informing the end-users, incumbent on the providers of publicly available electronic communications services and put in place the price comparison tool called Veritel.ro. The providers have the obligation to introduce in the database any new commercial offer and any change of the existing offers within 4 working days from their launching or changing date.
Veritel.ro does not have any lucrative or commercial purpose, and it was exclusively created for ensuring that the users are better informed. The application offers the users Internet access information on the offers of all the active providers on the market, to the extent the latter introduced them in the database. The operators cannot however introduce certain offers such as special loyalty offers or other individually negotiated offers, because these are based on specific criteria, adjusted to a particular subscriber.
The project “Online application for comparing the communications offers intended for the end-users” was implemented by ANCOM within Operation 1 “Supporting the setting-up of e-government solutions”, Key Area of Intervention 2 “Developing and increasing the efficiency of electronic public services”, Priority Axis 3 “Information Technology and Communications for the private and public sectors”, under the Sectoral Operational Programme “Increase of Economic Competitiveness”, co-financed by the European Regional Development Fund. The total value of the non-reimbursable financing amounts to RON 886,198.32, while the total value of the contract for the development of the Veritel.ro application amounted to RON 1,067,941.86, excluding VAT (the value of the hardware equipment and software licences required for the functioning of the application are included in this amount).
