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Romanian Communications during 2016-2020 – from Users' Expectations to Regulator's Objectives

17.11.2015

 

Romanian electronic communications users expect electronic communications services to migrate onto online platforms by 2020, mobile internet enfolding all the other electronic communications services. This is one of the conclusions derived from a survey ordered by ANCOM, as the Authority is in process of tailoring a regulatory strategy for the country’s telecommunications sector, for the period 2016-2020.

The results of this survey, as well as the strategic objectives that should shape the regulation of the electronic communications sector in the next five years have been extensively debated during this year’s edition of ANCOM’s international conference, together with representatives European regulatory authorities, of the operators and of their associations, with representatives of the Romanian users’ associations, as well as with representatives of OTT and content service providers.   
25 speakers have thus presented their views on the evolution of the electronic communications sector over the period 2016-2020 and proposed the Authority priorities and action directions for the regulatory activity in this sector in Romania, based on ANCOM’s discussion paper published in September 2015.
“Taking into account all these ideas, we will draw up a Strategy Paper to be launched for public consultation by mid-2016. This document will guide ANCOM’s activity until 2020. In designing this roadmap, we started from the users’ needs and perceptions, currently we are going through this ample process of consultation with all the stakeholders in the market and will bring forth a document to offer the predictability and stability the industry needs to speed up investment and innovation”, declared ANCOM’s President, Catalin Marinescu, in the opening of the international conference entitled “2020: A Telecom Odyssey”.
ANCOM deems that, although digital services demand will remain uneven and deeply heterogeneous in Romania, in the 2020 timeframe, fixed internet will continue ensuring high transfer rates, mobile internet will witness intensive growth, based on traffic growth spurred by tariff reduction and quality improvement, while the border between traditional electronic communications services and “applications” or “content services”, will gradually fade out, generating new regulatory challenges.
These trends have been perceived, as well, by the end-users participating in a survey ordered by ANCOM, aiming to establish a set of relevant information on the users’ perception of the electronic communications services and their consumption needs. The results of this survey are available, in Romanian, here.
The respondents deem that mobile internet will prevail in the realm of electronic communications services. Young residential users (up to 30 years of age) and rural ones think that fixed internet usage will decrease while mobile internet grows, and only business and media representatives, along with those of the authorities and of the academia believe in the fixed internet growth.
According to the users’ perception, mobile telephony use will keep growing once with the ever younger age of first use, with the release of high performance terminals at lower prices and with the growing usage of mobile internet. On the other hand, some of the interviewed groups consider that data services will inevitably replace mobile telephony, once with the advance of applications enabling real time communication using the internet (Facebook, WhatsApp, Skype calls). The users perceive fixed telephony and linear television as being on a downward trend or even on the way to extinction, and see their replacement by mobile and, respectively, by internet access services as imminent.
The international conference “2020: A Telecom Odyssey” organized by ANCOM on 17 November 2015 brought together regulatory authorities in Europe, electronic communications associations, operators, online content providers and consumers. Further details on this conference are available on the dedicated web page.