On November 14, Ion Smeeianu, President of the National Regulatory Authority for Communications (ANRC) attended the conference "What's Next in Fixed telephony?" held as part of the BizDays event.

The President of ANRC presented the situation on the Romanian fixed telephony market, underlining the role of the National Regulatory Authority has in view of the near liberalization and for maintaining the conditions for a free competition on this market starting January 1st, 2003.
"During the past moths we have had talks with a great number of Romanian and foreign telecommunications companies willing to enter the local market. There are Romanian state-owned electricity, railways and radiocommunications companies, as well as private cable companies which manage an alternative infrastructure and which intend to form strategic partnerships to provide telecommunications services on the liberalized market. After liberalization, we expect the competition to have a great impact on the quality of services and tariffs for the end user. At this point, ANRC is drafting normative decisions to ensure the conditions for the proper functioning of the Romanian competitive communications market," pointed Ion Smeeianu.

"One of the most important projects ANRC is currently working on is the notification procedure for the communications services providers. Any person who wants to provide electronic communications services starting January 1st, 2003, will have to read the text of the General Authorization, will identify the sectors where he wants to activate and will notify ANRC on the type of services or networks he wants to provide and the activity area. This notification is the legal act guaranteeing each provider the right to effectively begin activity within 7 days. The notification can also be made at one of the 46 territorial offices set in each municipality and in each district of Bucharest. We think the the General Authorization Decision will be published in the Official Gazette by the end of November, or the beginning of December 2002 at the latest," added the President of ANRC.

Ion Smeeianu reminded on this occasion that ANRC had already identified one of the markets in the electronic communications sector where there is no effective competition and which needs regulation: the market of access to public fixed telephony networks and put forth, according to GEO no.79/2002, the designation of the National Telecommunications Company ROMTELECOM S.A. as operator with significant power on this market. "We have already launched for public consultation on the ANRC website the Decision drafts for the principles and preconditions of the reference offer for interconnection and the principles and preconditions of the reference offer for co-location. These refer to the maximal interconnection and co-location tariffs that ANRC intends to set. The interconnection and co-location tariffs the operators will have to pay will be reflected in the tariffs they charge for the provision of services. The tariffs put forth by ANRC allow the operators to charge competitive tariffs, accessible to the end user," Ion Smeeianu declared.