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The National Communications Administration and Regulation Authority (ANCOM) last year handed down fines worth a total of 2.43 million lei (rd 530k euro, ed. n.) to several electronic communications and postal service operators, and conducted some 4,000 checks in the sector, the communications watchdog said in release on Monday.
ANCOM carried out in 2018 as many as 2,728 control actions that ended with offending companies being served 203 notifications, 391 warnings and 89 fines in excess of 2.4 million lei, as follows: Telekom Romania Mobile Communications was fined 1.1 million lei, of which 600,000 lei for the network being down as a result of the worst security incident registered in Romania's electronic communications, and 500,000 lei for non-observance of the obligation to keep the network logs at the granularity level stipulated in the license.
ANCOM also slapped telephony service providers with 19 fines amounting to 155,000 lei, mainly for the violation of their obligations regarding number portability and roaming services.
Another 26 fines worth a total of 240,000 lei have been handed down to providers of television and radio broadcasting services (RTV).
According to the cited source, CATV service providers received 33 fines totaling 237,500 lei for failure to meet the requirements set forth in the General License, while another nine fines worth a total of 72,000 lei were ordered on radio communication operators.
In 2018 ANCOM completed a broad campaign to measure national voice coverage of the areas that hold at least 98 percent Romania's population by operators Orange, Vodafone and Telekom, which had this requirement stipulated in the radio spectrum licenses awarded to them at the 2012 tender. In this context, Telekom Romania Mobile Communications was fined 500,000 lei, while Vodafone Romania and Orange Romania were served warnings for failure to meet their legal obligations.
As far as the postal services market is concerned, ANCOM carried out 395 controls last year that ended with 55 warnings and seven fines worth a total of 60,000 lei slapped on the offenders.
The highest fine in the market was 25,000 lei and was ordered for the Romanian Post Company for breach of the minimum quality requirements for internal mail.
