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

The Administrative Board of the National Regulatory Agency for Electronic Communications and Information Technology (ANRCETI – www.anrceti.md) is announcing a public session, scheduled for Thursday, December 23, to examine the approval of draft decisions on imposing special obligations on providers with significant market power on the market for voice call termination on individual fixed telephone networks (market 3) and on that for voice call termination on individual mobile telephone market (market 7). The session will take place at ANRCETI office, 5th floor, Conference Hall (134 Stefan cel Mare bd.).

On Friday, December 17, the Agency summoned public hearings on the two draft decisions. The participants presented and discussed the objections and proposals submitted by providers during their meetings at ANRCETI office, December 6-10, 2010.

During the hearings, the representatives of JSC „Orange Moldova”, JSC „Moldtelecom”, JSC ”Moldcell”, JSC „Riscom” and LLC „Arax-Impex” motivated their objections and recommendations for the draft decisions, commented on the recommendations of other providers in connection with their individual obligations established in the draft Administrative Board Decisions.

All the commentaries and recommendations provided by stakeholders during the public consultations have been incorporated into the synthesis of recommendations, currently available on ANRCETI Web site. The document also contains ANRCETI’s viewpoint concerning every recommendation included in the synthesis.

The Explanatory Note (doc. in state language) describes in detail the obligations for providers, the circumstances that influenced the decision of the Agency, the rationale for the proportionality of obligations, as well as the estimation of the impact the given obligations will have on the two relevant markets.

Pursuant to the Law on Electronic Communications, ANRCETI established a number of special ex-ante obligations for providers with significant market power on the two relevant markets, meant to contribute with solutions to competitive problems on the given markets. These obligations pertain to ensuring the access to the networks and/or interconnection, transparency of access and/or interconnection services, admitting of no discrimination against other providers, cost control and cost-oriented prices, separate cost accounting.

Previously, the Administrative Board issued decisions on designation of providers with significant market power on the markets for voice call termination on individual fixed telephone networks and on individual mobile telephone networks (18.11.2010). According to the mentioned decisions, the Board designated 17 providers (JSC „Moldtelecom”, JSC „Riscom”, LLC „Sun communications”, LLC „Arax-Impex” etc) with significant market power on the market for voice call termination on individual fixed telephone networks and 3 providers (JSC „Orange Moldova”, JSC „Moldcell” and JSC „Moldtelecom”) - with significant market power on the market for voice call termination on individual mobile telephone networks.

December 20, 2010