Hotnews.ro: How do you asses the Romanian telecommunication market?

Viviane Reding, EU Telecoms Commissioner: With 21.6 million inhabitants, 2000 telecoms operators in 2007 and an annual turnover of almost €3.8 billion, Romania is a potentially important market in the European Union. The presence of a high number of alternative operators such as OTE, RCS&RDS, UPC, Vodafone or Orange, has improved the competitiveness in the sector. Positive is in particular the rapidly growing mobile penetration rate.

However, Romania still has one of the lowest fixed line and broadband penetration rates in the EU27. It is here, where the competent national authorities, together with the European Commission, have to do further work to improve the conditions of effective competition. Despite the relatively developed regulatory framework in Romania, difficulties remain to ensure the full benefits of liberalisation in the practical implementation of the common EU rules. Romania still faces problems in terms of access of new entrants to the existing infrastructures via wholesale products (local loop unbundling, bitstream access or carrier-selection/preselection). This impedes new telecoms operators to compete with the already existing network operators. The inexistence of number portability, the non-availability of caller location information for 112 emergency calls or the lack of a broadband strategy are also amongst the difficulties Romania will have to resolve. I am of course always available for a close dialogue with the Romanian government and the Romanian telecoms regulator to give EU support, where possible.

Hotnews.ro: The European Commission has warned Romanian - either by an infringement procedure or not - about some disfunctionalities regarding the 112 service and the National Telecomm Regulator Authority (ANRCTI). Have the measures and an