© Valentina Petrova
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BTC will no longer have an obligation to maintain a network of street telephones, to maintain telephone directories and reference services. This is clear from the decision of the Communications Regulation Commission of 17 June, which opened a public draft decision, which cancels this obligation. The deadline for submitting opinions is July 22.
Meanwhile, the commission has made an analysis that shows the obvious – that the need for these services has been “greatly waning” over the last 10 years, so that their elimination will not affect the public interest. Now BTC is obliged to maintain 24-hour street telephones, and there must be at least 2 such telephones per thousand people.
As of the end of 2020, the number of fixed telephone posts in the country is 837,249. The data available to CRC show that between 2010 and 2020 the decrease in their number is 60.11%. For the same period the consumption of fixed telephone service is 75.76% compared to 2010, and of these telephones – by 95%.
For the telephone directory from CRC they say that according to the data provided by BTC, the share of the subscribers who agreed to include their data in it is only 0.05% of all users of voice services. In absolute value, their share decreased more than 2 times for the period 2015 – 2020. The last printed edition of the telephone directory, provided by BTC in its capacity as an obligated enterprise, is from 2011, as CRC has approved a circulation of 35 thousand, and only 152 pieces were realized. For the period 2016-2020 there are no realized revenues from the sale of telephone directories in printed form.
In the period 2010-2020, the volume of calls to the number 11800, which provides reference information, has shrunk more than 33 times, which clearly shows the lack of potential in this service to contribute to improving the welfare of that part of the users of voice services, who would benefit from the protection mechanism that the universal service provides them, the commission’s analysis says.
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