23.09.2010

According to the draft decision submitted today to public consultation by ANCOM, all the providers of internet access services have the obligation to publish on their own websites, and to include in the contracts concluded with the end-users, respectively in the general conditions for the service provision, a relevant set of indicators and parameters related to the quality of the internet access service. They also have the obligation to publish on their websites information on the measurement procedure.

The Internet access providers will have the obligation to publish the administrative quality parameters such as:

-         the term necessary to provide Internet access;

-         the damage repair term;

-         the frequency of the complaints submitted by users;

-         the frequency of the damage-related complaints;

-         the frequency of the complaints related to the invoicing correctness;

-         the term of solving the users’ complaints.

Measuring these parameters requires for the providers to register all events corresponding to the respective parameters and to draw up a statistical situation at the end of the reporting period.

Furthermore, providers with more than 1,000 connections will publish the technical quality parameters such as:

-         data transfer speed;

-         transfer delay;

-         transfer delay variation;

-         packet loss rate.

The abovementioned Internet access providers will create, manage and make available for the users an application meant to real-time measure and assess the technical quality parameters for the Internet access service.

The decision will apply to the Internet access services provided over fixed or mobile public electronic communications services, irrespective of the access technology used: narrowband wireline access technologies (dial-up/ISDN connections) or broadband wireline access technologies (DSL, cable modem), or wireless access such as WLAN, GSM, GPRS and UMTS.

“ANCOM deems that improving the users’ awareness level helps increasing the consumers’ power and capacity to better protect their interests, while incentivizing and upholding competition. The well-informed users, ready to exercise their ability to choose, put a necessary pressure on the providers, thus spurring them to offer innovating services, of better quality and at more and more competitive tariffs. Therefore, the consumers that make informed choices not only benefit from competition, but also initiate and support it”, Catalin Marinescu, the President of ANCOM, stated.

The draft decision is available for consultation on the ANCOM website, here. The interested persons are invited to send their comments and suggestions, by 27.10.2010, at the ANCOM headquarters in 2 Delea Noua Street, Bucharest 3, or directly to the Registry. Comments and recommendations may also be sent by fax to +40 732 845 404 or by e-mail to consultare@ancom.org.ro.