“As telecom operators’ revenues fell in 2010 due to the difficult economic context Romania was facing, ANCOM decided to exempt them from paying monitoring fees. This measure, alongside the one reducing by 15% the tariff to use the radio spectrum, is aimed to help operators, which registered revenue declines for the second consecutive year,” ANCOM president Catalin Marinescu said in a press release Thursday.
In 2010, the Romanian communications and postal service market reached EUR3.98 billion, down 6.2% from 2009, when it stood at 17.99 billion lei (about EUR4.24 billion), according to ANCOM.
The communications market hit EUR3.63 billion in 2010, down 6.6% compared to 2009, and the postal service market stood at EUR350 million, down 2.3% from the previous year.
On the communications market, the most significant revenue drop was registered on the hard-line telephony segment (-12.4%).
In 2010, revenues on the hard-line telephony segment stood at RON2.61 billion, on the mobile telephony segment at RON8.63 billion and on the Internet service segment at RON1.32 billion.
All authorized telecom and postal service operators on the local market, whose annual turnover or revenues exceed EUR100,000, must pay an annual monitoring fee to ANCOM.
In 2008, the fee was set at 0.132% of the turnover or revenues obtained exclusively from telecom operations. (EUR1=RON4.2940)