The European Commission (EC) has raised no objections to the Romania regulator ANCOM’s view that wholesale markets for broadband internet access services provided at a fixed location need no regulatory intervention.
ANCOM has adopted a position paper that relies on a market analysis carried out in order to review and – where necessary – to strengthen competition in the retail market for services of broadband internet access provided at a fixed location by regulatory measures that could be imposed in the wholesale markets.
ANCOM carries out such analyses on a regular basis in order to ensure effective competition in the market, to the benefit of end-users.
The latest analysis, which looked at the market between 2015-2019, concluded that the market remains competition-driven in Romania, with the upstream wholesale markets seeing no specific regulation, and with insignificant usage of the local loop. Therefore, ANCOM concluded once more that no regulations are required in the markets for local access provided at a fixed location and – respectively – for central access provided at a fixed location, for mass-market products.
ANCOM says that following the European consultation process, it received the EC’s comments raising no objections to the adoption of the measures proposed in the Position Paper.
In its comments, the EC also indicated to ANCOM the need to permanently monitor the retail market for broadband internet access services, in order to step in with ex-ante regulatory measures, should a significant change occur with respect to the market definition and to the competition situation in market.
ANCOM will therefore monitor the evolution of market conditions, in particular as regards the segment of internet access services with speeds above 100 Mbps.
It will also watch closely the evolution of the main operators’ pricing strategies, at the geographical level, in order to assess the need to define relevant sub-national markets and will monitor the occurring significant changes in the market conditions that may require a more detailed definition of the product market, in particular as regards the operators’ ability to compete effectively with RCS&RDS on the segments of high-speed internet access services.
