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ANCOM Designates Romanian Post National Company as a Universal Service Provider in the Postal Field
20.12.2013
The Romanian Authority for Management and Regulation in Communications adopted today, during the Consultative Council, the decision designating ex officio the Romanian Post National Company S.A. (CNPR) as a universal service provider in the postal field for the period 1 January 2014 – 31 December 2018, for the provision of all the postal services within the scope of universal service.
As a universal service provider, CNPR will have the obligation to provide these services throughout Romania, including in remote or sparsely populated geographic areas, where the reduced number of cleared and distributed postal items does not justify the presence of a postal provider on commercial principles.
Furthermore, CNPR will have the obligation to ensure at least one clearance from every access point and at least one delivery to each indicated address in every Romanian locality, every working day, minimum 5 days a week, excepting the localities characterised by exceptional geographic conditions, where the delivery frequency set by ANCOM is lower. In addition, CNPR will ensure the disabled persons’ access to the services within the scope of universal service under equivalent conditions to those offered to the other users.
The tariffs charged by CNPR for the provision of the postal services within the scope of universal service must be affordable, uniform, transparent, non-discriminatory and cost-oriented, bearing in mind the economic efficiency, the ensuring of the right to access the universal service and the development of the public postal network.
Should the provision of these services prove to be an unfair burden for CNPR, ANCOM may decide to compensate the net cost of the possible losses registered as a result of fulfilling the universal service obligation. The compensation may be done only upon the CNPR request and is to be financed from a universal service fund administered by ANCOM. As well, CNPR will have to elaborate and transmit ANCOM the separate financial statements, prepared based on a separate accounting system developed within the company’s internal accounting system.
The Authority designated the universal service provider ex officio given that, following the intention notice published in September 2013, none of the submitted requests fulfilled the requirements of form and eligibility set in order to designate the universal service providers in the postal field.
Considering the need to ensure the universal service for all the Romanian citizens by providing certain minimum services at a certain quality level, ANCOM analysed the capacity of the authorised postal providers from Romania to observe the obligations incumbent on the universal service provider in view of designating one of them ex officio.
The Authority thus assessed that CNPR is the only postal provider able to observe the universal service obligation, given that it holds more than 5,700 manned access/contact points, approx. 60% of the total such points existing on the Romanian territory, and has the capacity to ensure uniform tariffs across the country. Furthermore, while the other providers’ activity is focused primarily in the urban area, CNPR ensures a countrywide coverage, including the sparsely populated rural areas or the localities characterised by exceptional geographic conditions, more than 86% of the CNPR total access/contact points being found in the rural area.
