Press Releases

Budapest, June 26, 2003 14:30

Klaus Müller, Director of Matáv, Ms. Katalin Szalontai Víg, deputy sales director of Matáv and Mr. Tamás Lukács, managing director of eTel Hungary Kft. signed the new interconnection agreement between the two companies, based on the LRIC prices approved by the Communications Tribunal (HDB) on 19 May, which - following the agreement signed by the two service providers in May last year - enables physical interconnection.

At the signing of the agreement Mr. Tamás Lukács emphasized: "We are confident that the upcoming amendment of the Communications Law will launch competition on the market of fixed line service providers and will have a beneficial impact on the interconnection charges as well. eTel expects that the new regulation will especially focus on ensuring the transparency of cost settlements between service providers. eTel Hungary decided on approving the establishment of physical interconnection with Matáv with a view to these favorable processes."

Mr. Zoltán Gálig, the Matáv official responsible for the negotiations on concluding the agreement said at the signing: "Because of the excellent cooperation, the parties completed the negotiations on the interconnection agreement in record time - less than two weeks. We are pleased to acknowledge that eTel found the LRIC based interconnection charges of Matáv (including the forecasted further decreases) competitive."

eTel submitted its first offer on interconnection to Matáv at the beginning of the process of liberalization in telecommunications, in January 2002. eTel was the first non-mobile telecommunications service provider in Hungary to conclude an interconnection agreement, subject to the provisions of the new Law on Communication, with another telecommunications service provider, with Pannon GSM, then they signed agreements with the rest of the service providers, too. The first agreement with Matáv was concluded in May 2002, while the actual possibility for physical interconnection has been created now.

On May 19 HDB accepted the new reference offer of Matáv for network interconnection and leased line, the so-called MARIO, an offer that has been calculated according to the rules applied in the European Union. The newly accepted interconnection charges represent a reduction of between 18 and 37 per cent compared to the former charges. In line with the decision of HDB, Matáv will do its best to ensure that, following the normal procedure, the charges of interconnection services continue to decrease until the date of Hungary's accession to the European Union, which will mean that the Hungarian charges will be close to the corresponding EU figures.