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) approved, in a public session on Tuesday, September 15, 2015, the decisions on ex-ante regulatory remedies on the market for wholesale termination segments of leased lines (market 6) and wholesale trunk segments of leased lines (market 8), regardless of the technology used for the provision of leased or dedicated capacity, by which the regulator decided to maintain the ex-ante remedies previously imposed on Moldtelecom in connection with its significant market power on both markets. The remedies have been established by Board Decisions No.35, and 36 accordingly, on 20.12.2011.

The new Board Decisions became effective on the date of approval - 15.09.2015 and will be published in the Official Gazette. The Board adopted the Decisions after ANRCETI specialists conducted, under Article 53 of the Law on Electronic Communications, the third round of analysis of the two markets and found no effective competition thereon.

As a result of analysis, ANRCETI revealed that markets 6 and 8 remain susceptible to ex-ante regulation and Moldtelecom continues to be the provider with significant market power in those markets. Given the fact that during the past two years after the second round of analysis of market 6 and 8, the competitive conditions on these markets did not change significantly, ANRCETI decided to maintain the ex-ante remedies imposed on Moldtelecom during the first round of market analysis.

Among these is the obligation of Moldtelecom to develop and make publicly available, on its web site, the conditions for the provision of leased line services in the Leased Lines Reference Offer (ORLI) and in the standard Leased Line Agreement, which is part of the ORLI. These documents represent a public engagement of Moldtelecom to provide leased line services to any requesting provider in all locations, under the announced terms and conditions.

ANRCETI also required that Moldtelecom applies prices oriented to long-run average incremental cost (LRAIC) for the provision of leased line and associated services, keeps separate accounting for all the activities related to leased line service provision, have an audit of the separate accounting implementation, makes publicly available and submit to ANRCETI an annual audit report, before May 31 of the following year.

Pursuant to Art. 53 (1) of the Law on Electronic Communications, ANRCETI performs market analysis at least every two years, in order to ascertain whether these markets are effectively competitive and has the right to impose, maintain, amend or withdraw previously imposed remedies for providers with significant market power.

September 16, 2015