In order to draw up the Position Paper on the Regulatory Strategy for the Romanian Electronic Communications Sector up to 2010, ANRCTI and its consultant, TASC Strategic Consulting, undertook a diagnosis-analysis of the Romanian electronic communications sector which outlined, among others, the fact that Romania lags behind most of the other EU Member States in terms of the penetration of its electronic communications services. Main gap in penetration falls in the broadband and fixed telephony services, whereas penetration of subscription TV services is higher than the European average.  

Mobile telephony and subscription TV services fueled the Romanian market growth. Whereas revenues from subscription TV registered the highest annual average growth rates (40%), mobile telephony became the most important source of revenues within the sector (56.7% of the total gross revenues). Therefore, both segments reached high levels of penetration (62.5% as regards subscription TV and, respectively, 90.5% for mobile telephony). On the contrary, the penetration rate of broadband Internet access services is still unsatisfactory, in spite of the accelerated growth, while fixed telephony seems to continue its ”zero growth” from both revenues and penetration standpoints.

The 7% penetration rate of dedicated broadband Internet access (connections provided at fixed locations, without connections for mobile access) ranks Romania on one of the last places within the European Union, at mid-2007. However, as regards the structure of Internet access services, the broadband penetration grows by almost 100% a year, while popularity of dial-up connections is rapidly decreasing: in the past four years, the dial-up traffic decreased on average by 40% a year, hence its share in the total access connections is 33%. Overall, in Romania, Internet penetration rate reached 21% at mid-2007 (number of connections per 100 inhabitants).

“During the international conference that ANRCTI will be organising on November 13, we shall discuss about how to promote the development of broadband Internet access and we shall also present the other deficiencies identified in the communications market, which we shall strive to remedy in the following three years”, Dan Georgescu, the ANRCTI President, declared.

The Position Paper on the Regulatory Strategy for the Romanian Electronic Communications Sector up to 2010 shall be launched for public consultation on ANRCTI website and shall be debated with the industry on November 13, 2007 during the ANRCTI’s annual international conference “Reforming the Communications Regulation: In Search of the Winning Strategy”.