General remarks
From the beginning of 2003, with
the total liberalization of the
electronic communication market, no
specific licence per se is necessary
to provide any electronic
communication services. A simple
notification to ANRC (National
Regulatory Authority for
Communications) is sufficient. By
the middle of 2004, 2032 companies
had registered notifications at ANRC
in order to operate in accordance
with the General Authorization.
Among these, 1148 are now authorized
to provide electronic communication
networks and services. 191 companies
are authorized to provide telephonic
services, 425 data transmission
services and 475 Internet access.
However, not all of these are
offering services on a commercial
basis. (see updated situation at http://www.anrc.ro/en/situatii.htm).
49 Telephony Operators received
Numbering Resources from ANRC.
The turnover of the
communications services and public
networks providers who notified to
ANRC the beginning of their activity
until the end of March exceeds
Euro1.8 billion.
A. Fixed line services.
At the end of 2003, the
penetration rate was around 20% at
the national level. Around 71 % of
the lines are digital. According to
MCTI, around 58.1% of the households
had a fixed connection by the end of
2003. The fixed connections are
mainly used for local voice traffic.
Roughly 55% of the total number of
calls are such calls and 20% being
long distance calls.
RomTelecom,
had a monopoly for the provision of
fixed telephony until January the
1st 2003, at which date the market
was entirely opened to competition
in accordance with the latest EU
legislation. OTE has 53% of the
shares in RomTelecom, the remaining
part being owned by the Romanian
State.
After 1 January 2003, new
companies started to provide fixed
telephony services – the 2 biggest
being the 2 major CATV operators.
Astral
launched its fixed telephony
services – Astral Telefix – on
3rd December 2003, being the first
alternative fixed telephony operator
that signed interconnection
agreements with RomTelecom and with
the GSM operators Connex and Orange
. See their offer at http://www.astral.ro/telefonie/abonamente_si_tarife.html
RCS&RDS
group launched its fixed telephony
services – RDS.TEL – on 6 April
2004. See the offer at http://www.rdsnet.ro/solutii/telefonie.htm
Other companies that offer fixed
telephony services are Atlas
Telecom or SNR
. The new operators target primarily
business users with large national
and international traffic. Further
companies are expected to enter the
market this year, such as
PostTelecom, Teletrans,
Telecommunicatii CFR and PCNET.
17 interconnection agreements
were signed with RomTelecom as of 1
May 2004. (for an updated list see http://www.anrc.ro/en/interconectare_acorduri.htm)
A large number of new companies
entered the market to provide
specifically international calls
through prepaid cards, such as :
PCNET
Astral
SNR
GLOBTEL
Internet
B. Mobile Telephony
In April 1997 the GSM services
were launched in Romania through Connex
– the brand name of Mobifon - and
by Orange,
previously called Dialog –
operated by MobilRom. These two
companies have rapidly development a
rapidly expanding market. Both GSM
operators cover around 90% of the
Romanian territory. Orange Romania
reached about 3,611,000 clients at
the end of the first quarter 2004,
while Connex had 3,672,138 clients.
In May 2000 Cosmorom,
owned entirely by RomTelecom, also
introduced a GSM service and covered
around 40% of the area. Cosmorom has
today less than 100 000 subscribers.
In the year 2000 Zapp
was launched and offers services in
450 Mhz frequency band, using the
CDMA technology. Zapp reached 100
000 customers in March 2003, and
estimated to have 200 000 until the
end of 2003. However, we have no
recent figures to confirm that.
The total number of mobile users,
7 350 000 in April 2004,
significantly exceeds the number of
fixed line subscribers, the latter
being around 4.3 million.
C. Data transmission and
Internet services
The data transmission segment is
extremely dynamic. At the end of
2000 there were operation licenses
for 16 data transmission national
operators and111 licenses were
issued for the installation and
operation of a digital
point-multipoint data communication
network.
The development of data
transmission is related to the
introduction of new services such as
access to Internet. In 2001 the
Internet penetration in Romania was
still low (about 9%), but it is
rapidly growing. In 2003 the number
of Internet users reached 16 % of
the population. 7% of Romanians
access the Internet at least once
per week. 8% owns a Personal
Computer.
In the beginning of 2004 there
were 60 000 registered .ro domain
names. At the end of 2002, it is
estimated that 10% of the total
traffic over the fixed network was
used for Internet connections
D. CATV market
There are 3 major companies
covering 80% of the market with a
75% urban penetration. Over 900
small companies, with local or
regional presence are also on the
market. . The penetration of CATV at
the end of 2003 was 55% of all the
households with a total number of
subscribers of 3,750,000.
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