Brussels, 05/03/2009 (Agence Europe) - In a letter published on Thursday 5 March, the European Commission welcomed the move by the Romanian National Authority for Communications (ANC) to bring its regulation of mobile termination rates - wholesale charges operators pay each other for connecting calls on their networks - in line with the forthcoming Commission recommendation, due to be adopted at the start of April. The Commission also called on the regulator to align the mobile termination rates charged by the third and fourth mobile operators in Romania with those allowed for the two largest operators, whose “reasonably low level of rates” (5.03 eurocents per minute) it acknowledges. The Commission also said that in the absence of objective cost differences, this interim rate should also be applied to the other operators as soon as possible. As part of the cost of a call between customers of different operators, termination rates are included in everyone's phone bill and therefore eventually paid by the calling consumer.
ANC defined five distinct national markets for voice call termination, which correspond to the mobile networks of the operators active in Romania, i.e. Vodafone Romania, Orange Romania, Cosmote RMT, Telemobil and RCS & RDS. With regard to Vodafone Romania and Orange Romania, ANC proposes to impose a maximum average termination rate of €0.0503 per minute. For the other operators, ANC proposes a glide path with different tariffs until 1 July 2010, where Cosmote and Telemobil will meet the tariff of €0.0503 per minute and RCS & RDS will apply a tariff of €0.0567 per minute. These rates are about 30% lower than the ones currently charged. This asymmetric regulation of termination rates is temporary and will be replaced by a symmetric obligation during 2010 once a cost-oriented model is defined, based on the future Commission recommendation on termination rates. (I.L./transl.rt)