Bucharest Underground Cable Network Would Trigger Monopoly

The project is not economically, nor technically, viable, and works have been initiated in certain areas, without establishment of the cost for the project, the rent collected from telecommunications companies and the general technical conditions for connection to each building in Bucharest, said, Tuesday, the president of the Association for Cable Communications, Radu Petric, who attended the Cable Communications Convention.

He said that NetCity would create a monopoly in communications and the European Commission would block it.

Petric added that the two-year deadline for the implementation of the project is unrealistic.

In his turn, Dinu Malacopol, director within UPC, said that NetCity triggers disloyal competition.

"There would be monopoly that is not illegal, but it is not regulated. We are in a disloyal competition situation. All mobile operators are affected, except those with underground communications," said Malacopol.

At the same time, Ovidiu Ghiman, commercial director within RCS&RDS, mentioned that the project would make services offered to clients very hard to control.

"It is very hard to control the cable network, if it is in the grasp of third parties (…) Monopoly is not encouraged anywhere in the world," said Ghiman.

The three drew attention on the fact that Bucharest City Hall restricted the expansion of suspended cable networks and that any suspended network needs to be moved underground before May, 2008.

The president of the National Authority for Regulation in Communications and Information Technology (ANRCTI), Dan Georgescu, criticized the lack of transparency of the project unfolded by the Bucharest City Hall and he said that the regulatory authority would not tolerate the creation of a monopoly, no matter if it is based on infrastructure.

The company UTI Systems – together with subcontractors Ericsson Romania, Alcatel Lucent and Neotel – submitted the sole bid for the creation of the project worth over EUR200 million.

Entitled a metropolitan fiber optics network for telecommunications in Bucharest – NetCity, the project would be unfolded in public-private partnership, where the Bucharest City Hall brings the public domain.