Minimum speed internet "will be guaranteed"

All Internet providers will be required to include in their contracts with the final users specifications on quality indicators for their service, according to a decision of ANCOM (National Authority for Administration and Regulation in Communications) made public on Tuesday.

Thus, by 20 January 2012, all providers of Internet access services should include in their contracts concluded with the final users a set of quality indicators for the Internet access service.

Also, until 1 January, 2012, providers are required to issue a procedure for measuring quality parameters and the first data on these parameters will be made publicly available on their own web pages of suppliers until 25 April, 2012 for the first quarter reported.

Providers of Internet access will be required in the contracts to include the following technical quality parameters: the data transfer speed and the minimum guaranteed data transfer.

If the supplier does not provide a guaranteed minimum speed, it will be explicitly stated in the contract and under general conditions governing it.

Most Internet access services are ’best effort’ and the quality of these services depends largely on the network planning of the suppliers.

ANCOM will provide statistics on quality indicators

ANCOM announced that they will build, manage and make available to the public on its own website an interactive application that allows users to measure the technical quality indicators of their own supplier.

In addition, ANCOM will conduct and publish quarterly statistics on its website page regarding these quality indicators, so that users form an opinion on the quality of service offered by providers of Internet access.

However, providers of Internet access services will include a series of contracts and administrative quality parameters such as the term that will begin providing Internet access expressed in calendar days to remedy the malfunctions period expressed in hours and time resolution user complaints expressed in hours.

Suppliers will quarterly publish on their websites the values of the aforementioned parameters and, additionally, the frequency of user complaints, complaints relating to fault frequency and frequency of complaints concerning billing accuracy.

Translated by: Denisse-Meda Bucura
MA Student, MTTLC, University of Bucharest