Moldova and Romania will sign an intergovernmental agreement to reduce tariffs for roaming services and international calls between the two countries.
At a meeting on Wednesday, the Cabinet of Ministers of the Republic of Moldova approved the conclusion of this document. As Deputy Prime Minister, Minister of Infrastructure and Regional Development Andrei Spinu noted, the purpose of the agreement is to create the necessary conditions for reducing roaming fees paid by users traveling between the two states, as well as fees for regular international calls between the two states. Roaming services considered are voice calls made or received, SMS messages sent and received, mobile data usage. The application of the measures provided for by the agreement will begin no later than 3 months from the date of its entry into force. In order to ensure the possibility of reducing roaming charges for users, the draft agreement provides for the determination by the parties to take the necessary measures at the national level and in accordance with national legislation at the level of the wholesale market. As Andrei Spinu noted, it is planned that after the signing of the agreement, the tariffs for calls in roaming from Romania to Moldova will decrease at least 10 times. At the same time, calls in roaming from Moldova to Romania will not be charged at all. In addition, tariffs for Internet services used in roaming in Romania will be reduced by at least 5 times. According to the Deputy Prime Minister, depending on the packages used by subscribers from Moldova, the reduction in tariffs may be even greater. According to the Ministry of Infrastructure and Regional Development, according to the statistics of mobile operators in Moldova, for the period 2017-2019 (before the start of the pandemic crisis), the roaming services of Moldovan users in Romania accounted for between a quarter and a third of all roaming traffic generated by mobile users in our country. According to statistics on the use of roaming with a neighboring country in 2019, there were: 1.01 million minutes of calls from users from Romania; 1.3 million minutes of calls received by users in Romania. The consumed Internet in roaming in Romania is 1.3 TB. From 25% to 33% of all traffic used by Moldovan citizens in roaming falls on Romania. Thus, Romania is the main country in which Moldovan users use roaming services, which is about 2 times higher than the volume of roaming in Ukraine, the second most important destination for roaming services. Herewith, in networks in Romania, users from Moldova use about half of all roaming services consumed when traveling within the European Union. With regard to international incoming telephone traffic, there has been a sharp decline in its volume (at a rate of 25-30% per year over the past 5 years), which means that revenue from these services is declining regardless of the reduction in call termination rates. As a result, the direct impact on providers of electronic communications networks and services arising from the implementation of the agreement will decrease in parallel with the reduction in the volume of incoming telephone traffic. Meanwhile, the implementation of the agreement will create prerequisites for increasing the volume of services consumed by users. Thus, the practice of harmonizing roaming fees at the EU level showed that after the implementation of its last stage, the volume of roaming voice traffic increased in 2017 compared to 2016 by about 2-2.5 times, and for data transmission - by 4-5 times. The draft agreement includes measures related to the cooperation of governments and competent authorities in order to reduce fees for roaming services consumed in another state. After the implementation of regulatory measures on the model of European legislation, users in Moldova, while roaming in Romania, will be able, within reasonable use, to use voice, data and SMS services at tariffs close to national ones. The reasonable use policy will be developed by the National Agency for Regulation in the Field of Electronic Communications and Information Technologies of the Republic of Moldova together with mobile operators in Moldova, at the stage of implementation of the agreement. // 09.02.2022 — InfoMarket
