ANCOM proposes the strategic vision for digital communications up to 2020
18.05.2016
This strategic analysis follows the adoption, in 2015, of several sector strategies and policies of importance at a national and European level, being proposed in the context of the entry into force of the EU Regulation on an open internet and abolishing roaming charges in Europe and at a time when debate on the review of the European regulatory framework for communications is in progress, and when measures for reducing the costs of broadband networks are being transposed and implemented.
Forecasted developments
- the demand for digital services in Romania will remain uneven and heterogeneous, with increasingly intensive consumers that use an increasingly diversifying range of connected devices, while non-users will remain a challenge;
- the extensive growth of mobile internet, driven by extended mobile coverage and customer base will be replaced by intensive growth, based on the traffic growth driven by tariff decrease and better quality connections;
- the boundaries between traditional electronic communications services and online services (”applications”) will fade out, once with the service migration towards online platforms;
- inter-operator collaboration will be more frequent and will diversify in more advanced and flexible formulas;
- communications operators will integrate their business with/in various other domains, enabling the benefits of the communications market and the organic growth of businesses (financial services, energy distribution, audio-visual content, online services etc.);
- booming online platforms for the provision of applications and new services will enhance competition with traditional service providers.
ANCOM’s priorities for the future
The strategic priorities identified by ANCOM’s analysis are: promoting network competitiveness, maximizing service availability and capitalizing the benefits of IP networks. For implementing them, ANCOM identified a set of initiatives structured under 13 action lines, laid down and detailed in the document under consultation.
The Authority’s main action lines include symmetrical regulation of network access and adapting to increasingly shared networks, guaranteeing Net Neutrality, IP interconnection for voice services, stimulating service demand, improving spectrum licencing, planning and use.
ANCOM’s strategy for digital communications in 2020 is available, in Romanian, here. The interested persons are invited to send their comments and suggestions, by 19 June 2016, by e-mail to consultare@ancom.org.ro, by fax to +40.372.845.402, by mail to the ANCOM headquarters in 2 Delea Noua Street, Bucharest 3, or directly to the ANCOM Registry Office.