Romtelecom, Telemobil and COSMOTE protest against ANRC favoring Vodafone Romania and Orange Romania
Romtelecom, Telemobil and COSMOTE consider that ANRC’s proposed decision to postpone by one year the second phase of lowering interconnection rates for mobile operators Vodafone and Orange is groundless and harms the interests of the Romanian consumers, as declared by the general managers of the three companies during a joint press conference today.
The three top representatives pointed out that by this proposed decision, ANRC is breaching its impartiality, and far from promoting competition, is actually strengthening the existing market duopoly Vodafone-Orange. By making this proposal only 3 months after its initial ruling and with no apparent reason, the authority generates a strong unpredictability on the Romanian telecommunications market.
The ANRC decision could prejudice over 5 million subscribers of fixed and mobile telephony services in Romania (besides Vodafone and Orange), as signaled through public statements by several operators in the past days. ANRC had already determined that Vodafone and Orange should not be allowed to charge interconnection tariffs in excess of their costs and any delays in implementing this decision mean higher charges for end users. Moreover, such a decision would also have a negative impact on investment plans of approximately 1 billion Euros announced by the three operators for the upcoming years (over 500 million Euros announced by Romtelecom, 200 million Euros announced by Telemobil and over 220 million Euros announced by COSMOTE).
“It is absurd to try to manipulate the public opinion, invoking an argument which you have correctly rejected few months ago and trying to justify this decision through the process of aligning to the European realities, when ANRC knows very well that in this phase of establishing the interconnection tariffs, it only matters the costs registered by the operators. The delay of the decrease of the interconnection tariffs for Orange and Vodafone would cause us direct losses of 6 million Euros in 2007 only and this is a situation that we will not accept”, said James Hubley, CEO Romtelecom.
“It is abnormal that once a decision is officially adopted following years of delays, ANRC reconsiders its position, especially since the subject has a significant impact on the mobile operators’ business plans and harms the interests of end-users", added Piermario Di Pietro, General Manager Telemobil.
“The aim of EU regulation is to promote competition and to protect the interests of consumers. In contrast, ANRC’s proposal, by failing to take into account the realities of the Romanian market, which is dominated by two operators, will allow Vodafone and Orange to further exploit their dominant market position, to the detriment of competition and of consumers”, said Nikolaos Tsolas, CEO COSMOTE Romania.
The joint press conference was organized a week following the completion of the public consultation on ANRC’s proposed decision. The proposal to postpone the second phase of lowering interconnection tariffs for Vodafone and Orange was launched for public consultation under a special regime and only three months after ANRC had issued a decision by which Vodafone Romania and Orange Romania were forced to lower interconnection rates to some 0.0503 Euros/minute in four stages (by 11.3 % per each stage) from September 2006 to January 2009. The first reduction was made on September 1, and, according to the initial decision, it should have been followed by a new decrease on January 1, 2007, January 1, 2008 and January 1, 2009.
The interconnection rate is the amount paid by a company in order for its subscribers to be able to call other companies’ subscribers, respectively Vodafone Romania and Orange Romania in this case. The amount is included in the tariffs that companies charge their subscribers.