ANISP requests ANCOM to perform a market analysis regarding the wholesale and retail market of IP peering interconnection

Pursuant to art. 92 and the following from GEO no. 111/2011 and art. 61, f) of GEO no. 22/2009, ANISP requested ANCOM to identify the relevant market for IP peering interconnection, to carry out a market analysis in order to determine the competitive situation and to impose specific obligations on providers of electronic communications networks and services having significant market power, in order to address existing deficiencies in local IP interconnections (within Romania).

The local IP interconnections of operators having obvious significant market power do not have sufficient capacity to provide quality inter-network services with other operators within the country – fact which causes profoundly negative effects, especially during the current crisis caused by the COVID-19 pandemic – when a series of services and applications for remote work / teleconferencing / remote assistance over the Internet – have malfunctioned.

While in 2009 the European Commission rejected such a regulation initiated by the competent authority of Poland, based on considerations such as the equivalence of IP peering services with those of IP transit – a true finding, to some extent, for older Internet-based applications, such as such as FTP and / or HTTP browsing – in 2020 the nature of Internet-based applications has changed and small variations in service quality (QoS) and network latency can lead to malfunctions of these applications (teleconferencing, remote work, applications that require real-time reactions). This is, moreover, one of the reasons that made 5G technology necessary – as 4G technology had a latency considered too high for the needs of the present and of the future.