Romanian telecom regulator ANCOM wants to reduce termination rates by 12.5% from EUR 0.96 per minute to EUR 0.84 per minute in the near future, ANCOM president Sorin Grindeanu said last week.

This will hopefully lead to lower utilities bills for users, he added, reports local Agerpres.

ANCOM will put the decision into public debate by the end of this year, Grindeanu said. The new tariffs could become operational in mid-March.

In October, ANCOM decided to freeze the mobile and fixed termination rates at the 2014 level. The decision was supported by the largest telecom operators on the local market, Orange, Vodafone and Telekom but opposed by local group Digi.

Romania’s Competition Council said that ANCOM needed to revise the tariffs, which haven’t been updated in years, and the European Commission started an investigation on this matter. Termination rates are essential in determining the final prices with which operators sell communications services.

editor@romania-insider.com