Friday, November 09 2001

Bucharest - The recently set up National Association of the Internet Service Providers (ANISP) has yesterday scored its first major accomplishment (besides its very existence), having managed to persuade Romania's national phone company to reduce dial-up Internet connection tariffs.

During daytime hours (namely between 07:00 through 22:00) Romtelecom would charge Internet users only half of the normal tariff - which is set to increase by some 11.7% since January 1-st, 2001. Nighttime tariffs, which currently are ten times lower than daytime ones - will remain unchanged. "This year we increased tariffs by some 26%, against an inflation that wxceeds 40%,” Romtelecom's CEO Vassilis Tsakoniatis defended his company's decision to raise charges next year. While the price of an impulse remains unchanged at 595 lei, Monday through Friday during peak hours (07:00 - 16:00) it will only account for 40 seconds starting next year for normal voice local calls, and for 80 seccond of Internet connection.

The new measure, seen as a way to boost Internet traffic, will become operational as soon as some technicalities between ISPs and Romtelecom are solved, "which will probably happen in a matter of days, couple of weeks at most,” Romtelecom's Commercial Operations Executive Director Radu Moldovan said. The measure will be non-discriminatory, in the sense that it will apply to all ISPs, not only to the members of ANISP. However, the facility does not concern voice over IP services, a sector where Romtelecom enjoys a monopolistic position until January 1-st, 2003. "We will strictly respect the law, hence Romtelecom's monopoly over the voice service,” ANISP vice president Mihai Batraneanu said. "Depending on the impact it would have on Internet traffic, this cut paves the way for further reductions,” Moldovan added.

The new system will be implemented wherever possible, that is where main lines and digital exchanges or electromechanical exchanges with call collection systems are available. That basically means some 80% of Romtelecom's subscribers are potential beneficiaries of the new tariff system.

According to ANISP estimations, there are about 100,000 Internet services payers in Romania. "However, there are hundreds of Internet cafes, and other hundreds of corporate customers with large LANs behind them, each with hundreds of Internet subscribers. Overall there must be some 600,000 Internet subscribers, of which roughly two thirds are corporate subscribers,” Batraneanu assessed. It is nearly impossible though to estimate the number of users, for particularly in the case of residential subscribers there are typically several different users using the same account.

According to Batraneanu, who is also the president of PC Net, one of Romania's leading ISPs, Internet users generate monthly some 60 million minutes of local calls for Romtelecom, "of which Bucharest users alone account for about 60%.” Over the past couple of years the Romanian Internet industry has been growing at a rate of about 100% per year and ANISP officials seemed confident growth would continue at least as quickly next year. In 2000 the Internet industry turned over about $15 million. Nine o'clock Catalin Dimofte