Romanian telecoms regulator ANCOM has launched a consultation on the results of a study to identify every locality in the country where 30Mbps-plus fixed broadband services are unavailable. According to the spreadsheet published on the watchdog’s website, at 31 December 2014 there were 6,457 localities without an existing 30Mbps-plus local access broadband network (with the figure excluding localities which are covered by publicly-funded schemes to provide high speed connections whether or not they have yet been implemented), representing a population of 2,851,106, or approximately 13.5% of Romania’s total population. The definition of local access includes all fixed and fixed-wireless technologies. In addition, ANCOM’s figures say that at end-2014 there were 6,358 location which lacked both the 30Mbps-plus local access facilities and the necessary backbone infrastructure to deliver such high speed broadband services (again with the figures excluding localities with pending public-funded broadband connectivity rollouts), representing a population of 2,754,575 (or roughly 13%).
The study was conducted to support the Ministry of Agriculture & Rural Development, an institution which coordinates the implementation of development programmes in broadband infrastructure in rural areas of Romania. ANCOM invited interested parties to comment on the study and/or to provide new/corrected information by 21 June 2015.