Print
ANCOM Reruns the Regional Meetings with the Telecom Industry
26.04.2012
On Thursday, 26 April 2012, during a meeting with the representatives of the electronic communications industry in Cluj, the president of the National Authority for Management and Regulation in Communications (ANCOM), Mr. Catalin Marinescu, presented the most important provisions of the new legal framework in the electronic communications field and clarified, together with the Authority’s specialists, the way in which the new legislation impacts the provider–end-user relationship.
The ANCOM specialists explained to the communications industry representatives from Alba, Bihor, Bistrita Nasaud, Cluj, Mures and Sibiu the extent to which the new normative act in the telecom field amends or completes the general authorisation and licensing procedure, the conditions of use of the numbering resources, the obligations concerning the security and integrity of the electronic communications networks and services, the obligations to inform the users, as well as the sanctioning regime.
In light of the new normative act and wishing to offer support to the providers, ANCOM has elaborated and presented a draft Guide on the conclusion and minimum content of the contracts subject to the provision of publicly available electronic communications services. The guide is aimed at clarifying the way of interpretation and practical enforcement of the specific legal requirements in the electronic communications field which must be observed by providers when concluding contracts with the end-users, including the minimum clauses that these contracts must comprise.
As regards the sanctioning regime, the main amendments of the new telecom framework concerned the amount of the fines, their enforcement procedure and the notification regime. Therefore, if until the entry into force of the new framework the contraventions were sanctioned by a fine ranging from 5,000 lei to 100,000 lei, from now on these will be sanctioned by a fine ranging from 5,000 lei to 60,000 lei, respectively by a fine amounting to 100,000 lei in the case of repeated breaches. Furthermore, the new framework extended the scope of persons who can be enforced sanctions as a percentage of the turnover by reducing the turnover threshold from 5,000,000 lei to 3,000,000 lei. With regard to the enforcement of the sanctions, one of the amendments enables ANCOM to apply the corresponding sanction for the infringement of the legal provisions even when the provider has remedied the found infringement.
“We have scheduled again these meetings with the industry because, from end-2011, the Romanian electronic communications market is governed by a new legislative framework which brings a few important changes to the activity of the communications providers. We believe that the providers must primarily be informed about the legal provisions in order to deploy their activity in full legality”, Mr.Catalin Marinescu, the president of ANCOM, said.
Part of the “ANCOM Regional Meetings”, the meeting with the more than 150 industry representatives from Alba, Bihor, Bistrita Nasaud, Cluj, Mures and Sibiu counties is the first from a series of regional meetings to be held by the Authority in 2012. Thus, ANCOM continues the tradition of meeting face-to-face with the providers of electronic communications networks and services in the country, with the main goal to unitarily inform all the communications providers on the important legislative amendments and to find what are the most significant difficulties faced by the industry locally, for which ANCOM may offer support.
The meetings with the representatives of the electronic communications market will continue until the end of June, the meeting in Cluj being followed by that in Baia Mare, on 27 April, and by similar ones with the providers from Iasi and Suceava, on 3 and 4 May.
