National Regulatory Agency for Electronic Communications and Information Technology of the Republic of Moldova

The National Regulatory Agency for Electronic Communications and Information Technology (ANRCETI) will issue, in 2014, a number of regulatory acts aimed at promoting competition in the electronic communications sector and strengthening the protection of end users rights. The subjects of the regulatory acts and the terms for their approval are set up in Administrative Board Decision (doc. in state language) on approval of the Program for Regulatory Acts Elaboration for 2014, adopted last week in a public Administrative Board session.

The program was approved in order to ensure the transparency and predictability of ANRCETI’s regulatory activities, to facilitate the access of stakeholders to the information on new acts that ANRCETI’s going to approve in 2014, thus facilitating their participation in the decision-making process of the regulator. The draft program was subject to public consultation and completed with the proposals from stakeholders, which ANRCETI considered as justified.

ANRCETI priorities, set out in this Program, are focused on three main areas of activity: enhance fair competition by promoting preventive regulations, stimulate the development of electronic communications wireless broadband networks and services by issuing regulatory acts with regards to the use of spectrum, improve the existing regulatory framework by bringing it in line with evolving technologies and the electronic communications market.

With regards to preventive regulations, ANRCETI will start the third stage of relevant markets analysis in order to identify them as susceptible to ante regulation and designate the SMP providers. Also ANRCETI intends to start the procedure of completing the list of relevant markets with the mobile retail market and make it subject to analysis, in order to find if it is susceptible to ex-ante regulation and, if appropriate, designate the SMP providers.

As for the use of spectrum, ANRCETI plans to approve, in the first quarter of 2014, the Terms of Reference for auctioning licenses for the right to use 800 MHz, 900 MHz and 1800 MHz spectrum resources and the special license conditions of use of these frequencies, while in the fourth quarter - to issue a decision by which to declare technological neutrality for the systems that will use the 800 MHz, 900 MHz, 1800 MHz and 2100 MHz frequency bands.

In terms of improving the regulations in force ANRCETI intends to make amendments to the following acts: Regulations on Control Procedure in Electronic Communications, Guidelines on Separate Accounting Implementation by "Moldtelecom" within Internal Accounting, Procedure for Signaling Point Codes Management and Guidelines for Obtaining Technical Permit for Radio Station use.

According to ANRCETI Board decision, Chiefs of subdivisions will report to the Board regarding the fulfillment of the Program, according to competence and time limits, before the 20^th of the month following the reporting period.

December 27, 2013