Cheaper and better telecom services will be available to 3.6 million households under the new resolutions regulating the wholesale telecom and broadband internet markets of the National Media and Infocommunications Authority (NMHH).
NMHH President Annamária Szalai said in Budapest on Friday that the resolutions concern new technologies as well.
Thus, major service providers must also share optical and partly cable networks with their smaller competitors in areas where they do not have such lines. In accordance with EU directives, the authority believes that new-generation networks are a key to development as long as there is broad access to these.
It is important to regulate the wholesale market because the prices of this market will determine end-user prices.
In Hungary, broadband networks are currently accessed by 19% of communities and 62% of the population.
NMHH said the new regulation encourages investments because it eliminates uncertainty and directs developments towards new technologies.
One of the aims of NMHH was to make competition technology-neutral and infrastructure-based. Small companies can only compete with the services offered by big ones if they have access – in exchange for the wholesale fees – to the network of the major service providers and can thereby provide retail services.
Ms Szalai said competition will only intensify if an asymmetrical regulation is applied, and smaller service providers are not covered by the same rules as the big ones.
NMHH believes that service packages that are engaging in increasing competition on the market, rather than individual services. NMHH figures show 1.6 million households used telecom services as part of a package in 2010, 40% more than one year earlier.
Ms Szalai said service packages will play an even bigger part in future, which the new resolutions will also support.
In Hungary, three major service providers – Magyar Telekom, Invitel and UPC – currently control 70% of the fixed-line infrastructure. Around 30% of the 3.6 million households use the services of smaller companies, but NMHH hopes that this ratio will increase.
The resolutions have been approved by the European Union.
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