On November 18, ANRC launched for public consultation the projects for: The General Authorisation on the provision of publicly available telephony services and The minimal quality indicators of the publicly available telephony services.

The General Authorisation on the provision of publicly available telephony services sets the conditions under which telephony services can be provided, specifying the rights and obligations of the providers of such types of services. The publicly available telephony service is defined in the General Authorisation Draft as being the direct transportation, in real time, of the voice through a commuted public electronic communications network, so that any user connected to a terminal network point can communicate with any other user connected to another terminal point of the network. The publicly available telephony service can be provided by means of fixed public networks of electronic communications or by means of mobile public networks of electronic communications.

The minimal quality indicators of the publicly available telephony services were drafted in accordance with the EU Directives, with the standards and recommendations of UIT-T and ETSI. It contains definitions of the used terminology and establishes the measuring methods for the minimal quality indicators for the publicly available telephony service.

The project defines a failed call as the call made to a valid identification number, correctly dialed, which does not receive a busy tone, or calling tone, or any response signal within the first 20 seconds after the information has reached the network. The project stipulates that the maximum accepted percentage of failed calls during peak hours is of 2% in the case of local calls, of 3% for national calls, and of 5% for international calls.

The project for the Minimal quality indicators for the publicly available telephony service stipulates that the average period of time for the operator's response to these services must be of 10 seconds, and the malfunctions can be of maximum 6% for access lines that provide direct services (offered by the network's provider), and of maximum 5% for the access lines that provide indirect services (offered by third parties, through a network that does not belong to them). The project also stipulates that the maximal number of complaints on the correctness of the bill must not exceed 2% of the total number of issued bills.

By this document, the providers of publicly available telephony service have the obligation, imposed by ANRC, to report periodically the value of the quality indicators. The following data will be monitored: the time needed to connect to the public telephony service, the percentage of malfunctions, the remedy time, the percentage of failed calls, the time to set up the connection, the correctness of the bill, a.s.o.

The information obtained will be analyzed and presented in an accessible and suggestive manner to the public, making sure the users are correctly and thoroughly informed.
Setting the minimal quality conditions for the provision of publicly available telephony services is of great advantages to the user: a minimal guaranteed level of services quality; the possibility to correlate the service quality with the tariff charged; the possibility to select the public telephony service provider on rigorous criteria of price and/or quality.
Setting minimal quality conditions for the provision of publicly available telephony services also contributes to the development of effective, transparent, non-discriminatory competition and encourages the application of cost-oriented tariffs.