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), in the public meeting on Thursday, February 28, 2019, approved Administrative Board Decision on Quality Indicators for Electronic Communications Services and the Decision to approve the Methodology for Measurement and Evaluation of Quality Parameters for publicly available electronic communications services provided via GSM, UTMS and LTE public terrestrial mobile networks, in 800, 900, 1800, 2100 and 2600 MHz frequency bands. These documents will be published in the Official Gazette of the Republic of Moldova and will enter in force on March 15, 2019.

The new normative acts developed by ANRCETI are aimed to ensure that end-users better understand the information on quality of mobile services (voice and SMS services) and data transfer services, without their need to have deep knowledge of technologies.

Electronic communications providers are required to submit to ANRCETI and publish on their websites information on quality of electronic communications services for two categories of quality indicators - administrative quality indicators, such as: supply time for initial network connection, the frequency of end-users’ complaints, frequency of reported faults and repair time, complaint solving time, etc. and technical quality indicators, including:

a) Indicators for mobile telephony services - unsuccessful call ratio, dropped call ratio, call setup time, voice service coverage rate and SMS delivery rate;
b) Indicators for broadband mobile services - data transfer speed, full web download time, packet data transfer delay, coverage of data services population, etc.;
c) Indicators for fixed broadband Internet access services - data transfer speed, packet transfer delay, packet loss ratio.

The methodology for measuring and evaluating the quality parameters, approved by ANRCETI, provides for the organizational and methodological framework of the process of measuring and evaluating the quality parameters of mobile telephony services, SMS and data transfer services, provided via GSM, UTMS and LTE public terrestrial mobile networks.

The document provides for the I.P. "National Radio Frequency Management Service" to use this methodology in order to provide the necessary technical assistance to ANRCETI for:

a) monitoring and control of compliance with the obligations set out in the license conditions and other normative acts, regarding the quality and coverage of mobile electronic communications services;
b) analysis, from end-users perspective, of the quality and performance of mobile electronic communications networks and services by means of automated on-site tests.

The document also proposes the possibility for the methodology to be used by mobile providers for measuring and evaluating the quality of mobile services, in order to report to ANRCETI this information, as required by Electronic Communications Law no. 241/2007.

One of the goals pursued by the document is to maximize the accuracy of measurements and to offer the possibility to make a comparative analysis of the measurement results among providers.

At the same time, ANRCETI Director Octavian RĂU thanks the Ministry of Economy and Infrastructure of the Republic of Moldova, the specialists from I.P. "National Radio Frequency Management Service" for the support in drafting the mentioned documents, and also the providers, for the constructive dialogue with the view of finalizing and approving these normative acts.

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March 1, 2019