March 29th, 2001

The Romanian Association of ISPs (ANISP) by the end of July will set up a central hub exchange in Bucharest, which is expected to speed up dramatically the access to domestic sites hosted by Romanian ISPs, ANISP vice president and CEO of PCNet Mihai Batraneanu told Stockaccess. The new project, Romanian National Internet eXchange, or RoNIX, is worth over $100,000 and will be financed by ANISP members, with support from associate members as Cisco, IBM and Compaq. "Currently, if an Internet user wants to visit a Romanian site hosted by another ISP, the access is routed through America or Europe, depending on the ISP. When the new exchange becomes operational, there will be direct access between Romanian ISPs, with the consequent tremendous increase in speed," Batraneanu said. Physically, RoNIX will be located within the premises of the National RadioCommunications Company, "which is already an important partner for the local Internet community, for most of the top ISPs are increasingly moving towards wireless solutions," he added.

Besides the initial investment, RoNIX will be financed from the monthly fees paid by ISPs joining the project. ISPs will be able to rent from RoNIX different bandwidth - from 2 Mbps streams, to multiples of 2 Mbps, to 100 Mbps band, up to 1 Gbps highways. In the future, local exchanges connected to the central Bucharest hub will be set up in other major Romanian cities.

ANISP has been founded last year by 11 leading ISPs. The association has meanwhile rallied eight new members, "plus another two that are about to join," ANISP's Gheorghe Serban told Stockaccess. "Most of them are first-tier ISPs - namely companies that provide services to smaller, local providers. In fact, I can't think of any major ISP that is not ANISP member. It's difficult to make a precise assessment, but I would say that ANISP members account for at least three quarters of the total Romanian Internet traffic," Gheorghe Serban said.