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 – www.anrceti.md) is announcing a public hearing session to modify and amend the Administrative Board Decisions no. 60-75, 77-79 of 23.12.2010 on imposing special obligations to providers with significant market power on the markets for voice call termination in individual fixed telephone networks (market 3) and in individual mobile telephone networks (market 7). The session is scheduled for Friday, April 27, at 10.00 a.m., at ANRCETI office (134, Stefan cel Mare bd., 5th floor, Conference Room).

The draft documents were subject to public consultations on the Agency Web page on February 13 – March 5, 2012, following which ANRCETI, at the request of several providers, extended the term up to March 26, 2012. In this timeframe ANRCETI received commentaries and recommendations from JSC ”Moldcell”, JSC ”Orange Moldova”, JSC ”Moldtelecom”, JV ”Sun Communications”, National Association of Private companies in ICT sector and JSC ”Riscom”. The recommendations are included in the synthesis (doc. in state language) of recommendations available on ANRCETI Web site. This document also reflects the regulator’s viewpoint on the recommendations.

The public hearings will be focused on a number of objections and the recommendations to the draft documents, as well as on aspects related to tariffs applied for international traffic termination in fixed and mobile networks.

By means of the nominated draft documents, the Agency intends to complete the process of orientation of tariffs for call termination in fixed and mobile networks to LRIC costs, which is one of the special ex-ante obligations imposed by ANRCETI to fixed and mobile providers through its previous decisions no. 60-79 of 23.12.2010. When the latter were approved, the Administrative Board decided that the rates for termination will be gradually lowered (in 7 steps), every six months so that by January 1, 2014 they are cost-based. In its Decisions the Board established, via the benchmark method, the maximum tariffs for the first four stages of their descent (from 01.01.2011 to 31.12.2012). At that time, ANRCETI committed to develop the LRIC models and take them as basis for calculation of call termination tariffs.

Subsequently, with the support of consultants from the EBRD technical assistance project, the Agency developed the LRIC cost models for call termination, consulted them with the public and stakeholders and, on 02.08.2012, published the final version on its website at http://en.anrceti.md/fileupload/53. These models showed that the cost of call termination in the mobile network of a hypothetically efficient provider is of 1,12 euro cents/min., in fixed networks, locally – 0,42 euro cents/min. and nationally – 0,48 euro cents/min.

Based on calculations, ANRCETI established in the aforementioned documents, the amount of maximum tariffs for call termination services in fixed and mobile networks that can be charged by providers in the next three stages of tariff descent (01.01.2013, 01.07.2013 and 01.01.2014).

April 20, 2012