11.12.2006

Today, December 11, 2006, at the headquarters of the National Regulatory Authority for Communications (ANRC), took place the meeting of the Consultative Council where the representatives of the authority, together with the representatives of the main companies and the professional associations in the field of electronic communications, debated over four draft decisions, among which the decisions on postponing the tariffs for interconnection services charged by Orange and Vodafone.

Following the discussions of today, part of the last consultation stage, ANRC will communicate to Orange and Vodafone, during the month of December 2006, the maximum level of interconnection tariffs to be charged by these two operators in 2007.

One of the comments received regards the fact that ANRC is reviewing the decisions imposed to Orange and Vodafone without carrying out a cost model, a market analysis or without having new information or data that would justify such a decision. Related to these comments, ANRC continues to assert the correctness of the cost orientation process, the correctness of the cost calculation model and the accuracy of its results, as well as the necessity to implement the results of the model starting as of January 1, 2009.

At the same time, considering the significant gap between the regulated levels of the tariffs for call termination in the mobile networks of the Romanian operators and the operators from other European countries, ANRC suggested to slow down the reduction of the tariffs for call termination in the networks of Orange and Vodafone, in order to reduce this gap, even if it still exists.

The second draft decision debated today establishes the price cap formula for the retail tariffs of Romtelecom, on the markets where this company has significant market power. The price cap formula will be applied during a 3 years period, starting 2007, and will allow Romtelecom to practice an annual average increase of the retail services tariffs equal to the inflation rate (increase of consumption prices) plus 2.09%.

As a result of the comments received on this decision, ANRC replaced the obligation to obtain a prior agreement with the obligation of Romtelecom to notify the tariff changes, the introduction of new service packages or the tariff reduction schemes. Until the final version of this decision is adopted, Romtelecom may transmit to ANRC comments on the effective way of providing information together with the notification, and, if necessary, to present these comments during a series of meetings with ANRC.

During the Consultative Council meeting was presented the draft decision on amending ANRC president’s Decision no.1250/2005, submitted to the emergency consultation procedure as of December 6, 2006, following the amendment of the regulatory framework as regards obligations that may be imposed by ANRC on the retail relevant markets, by Government Emergency Ordinance no.70/2006.

Based upon the last decision debated during the Consultative Council meeting, related to the obligations of the electronic communications services providers to inform the end-users, ANRC suggested new measures for protecting the telephony and Internet access services end-users. The telephony providers will have the obligation to inform the public, both by their own means as well as by means of ANRC, as regards the technical and commercial conditions for service provision, as well as to make available to their subscribers itemized bills, while observing a minimum set of pieces of information. As regards the creation of the “End-User’s Guide” provided under this decision, ANRC agrees a working group to be established in order to provide the structure of the software application in accordance with the minimum set of pieces of information listed in the annex to the draft decision.