According to the published Strategy, during 2016-2020, the Romanian Authority will streamline its efforts towards maximising the telecom users’ benefits, mainly by promoting competition of communications networks and tariffs. “In the next five years, we will focus, more than ever, on innovation and technology performance on the level of communications infrastructure in Romania. More efficient networks, featuring superior technology performance, assimilate technology faster, can compete better and enable the provision of more competitive services on wider areas”, declared Catalin Marinescu, President of ANCOM.

 

Among the action lines identified in ANCOM’s Strategy, there are several measures with a direct impact on the telecom users in Romania. Thus, the Authority aims at creating interactive coverage maps of the communications networks in Romania, where telecom users could find accurate and up-to-date information. ANCOM’s interactive maps will be able to provide user-relevant information, such as data transfer speeds, available technologies, as well as the coverage quality level (basic, good and very good).

Moreover, ANCOM envisages the introduction of a trial period in continuing mobile services contracts that exclude the provision of equipment, in order to facilitate the users, switching providers and to stimulate service demand.

Furthermore, the Authority will analyse whether including broadband services within the scope of universal service may help achieving the objectives of the Digital Agenda for Romania, so as to spur fixed broadband network roll-out to underserved areas, thus determining maximized coverage at the population level up to 2020.

 

According to ANCOM’s Strategy, fixed-mobile convergent service bundles will become mass products by 2020. Ever more services will be available to Romanian users, anytime, anywhere (at home, at the office, on holiday, at a standstill or on the move etc.) and on any device (a desktop or a portable PC, a tablet or a telephone terminal etc.). In the meantime, the use of Wi-Fi will become a habit for on-line connecting multiple terminals in most households in Romania.

While services are migrating to on-line platforms, the boundaries between traditional electronic communications services and on-line ”applications” will fade away. The users will increasingly engage in simultaneous communication through a variety of equipment and applications, so that services such as video-telephony over TV or tablet will progressively replace traditional voice calls to/from family and friends, whereas teleconferences over laptops will spare many business travels.

 

ANCOM’s strategic analysis was adopted through a public consultation process conducted between May and June 2016 and followed the adoption, in 2015, of several sector strategies and policies of importance at a national and European level. ANCOM’s Strategy was adopted in the context of the entry into force of the EU Regulation on an open internet and abolishing roaming charges in Europe and at a time when debate on the review of the European regulatory framework for communications is in progress, and when measures for reducing the costs of broadband networks are being transposed and implemented in Romania.