Ancom - Tarifele de interconectare pentru telefonia mobilă scad de la 1 septembrie 2012

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Tarifele de interconectare pentru telefonia mobilă scad de la 1 septembrie 2012

30.08.2012

As a result of the regulations of the National Authority for Management and Regulation in Communications (ANCOM), the interconnection rates charged by the operators of mobile telephone networks will decrease by 24%, to 3.07 eurocents/minute, as of 1 September 2012. This is the second phase of lowering the maximum interconnection rates for mobile telephony, after the 19% - 30% cuts applied in March 2012.

The operators envisaged by this regulation are: Cosmote Romanian Mobile Telecommunications, Orange Romania, Romtelecom, RCS & RDS, Telemobil and Vodafone Romania, respectively all the active providers of publicly available mobile telephony networks and services in Romania, having been identified by ANCOM as SMP providers on the markets of voice call termination on individual mobile networks.

The termination rate is the cost of a call originated on an operator’s network and terminated in another operator’s network, paid by the operator of the originating network to the operator of the terminating network on the wholesale market. This cost is included in the tariff paid by the originating end-user. Charging excessive termination rates as compared to the costs may affect competition in the entire telephony market and may distort the users’ consumption behaviour.

The rates have been regulated following a market study conducted by ANCOM in 2011 which showed that all the 6 providers of services of access to a public mobile telephone network active on the Romanian market hold significant power on the wholesale market of voice call termination on their individual mobile networks. ANCOM imposed on all these providers the obligation to observe certain maximum interconnection rates.

Alongside the obligation to reduce interconnection rates, ANCOM also imposed on these providers the obligations of transparency, of non-discrimination, the obligation of allowing access to, and use of, certain specific network elements and of the associated infrastructure, and the obligation of price control.

As a result of ANCOM’s regulations, since 2003, the average tariff for voice call termination at mobile locations in Romania has decreased by more than 70%.

2013 will bring new developments in the realm of voice call termination tariffs, both at fixed and at mobile locations. The amounts and timelines of the reductions will be established following national and European consultation sessions.

The total number of active mobile telephony users in Romania amounted to 23.4 million at end-2011, by 4% less compared to 2010. The number of active prepaid cards dropped by 6% in 2011, down to 14.05 million, while the number of residential subscriptions dropped by 3% (to 6.42 million), and the number of business subscriptions increased by 5% (up to 2.94 million), compared to 2010. At the end of 2011, the mobile telephony penetration rate was 123 active SIM cards per 100 inhabitants, calculated based on the preliminary results of the 2011 census.

According to the statistical data reported by the providers, the electronic communications market was worth EUR 3.5 billion (RON 14.8 billion) in 2011. The revenues obtained by the mobile telephony operators from Romania from the services of voice call termination amounted to EUR 0.47 billion (RON 1.97 billion), accounting for 13.3% of the electronic communications market total value, whereas the fixed telephony operators obtained EUR 0.05 billion (RON 0.23 billion) from the services of voice call termination, which means 1.5% of the electronic communications market total value.