The sitting was attended by representatives of the Regulatory Agency for Electronic Communication and Postal Services (RATEL) Prof. Dr Jovan Radunovic, Chairman of the Managing Board, Dr Milan Jankovic, Agency Director, and Dr Dejan Suput, Head of the General Affairs Department.

On the occasion of the RATEL’s 10th anniversary, Prof. Dr Jovan Radunovic, Chairman of the RATEL Managing Board, informed the Committee members about the Agency’s results in the past 10 years. He said that the introduction of new technologies and investment into broader coverage had resulted in a considerable development of investments into the cable and wireless infrastructure.

“The competition among the operators offering different service packets has yielded lower prices for the users. The open market has enabled predictable and fair business dealings and the users can now, without changing their number, choose the operator whose offer suits them best. Also, the switch from analogue to digital broadcasting set the terrain for 4G licenses which is something that should be discussed soon”, said Radunovic.

Dr Milan Jankovic, RATEL Director, presented the RATEL 2014 Activity Report, stressing that, in line with last year’s amendments to the Law on Electronic Communications and to the Law on Postal Services, the former Postal Services Agency (RAPUS) and RATEL now operate together.

“We have managed to resolve all organisational issues in a very short period of time. All the RAPUS staff crossed over into RATEL and we now operate under the new name of Regulatory Agency for Electronic Communication and Postal Services (RATEL). Last year, the electronic communication service yielded about 1.5 billion EUR in profit, while postal services yielded 125 million EUR. Speaking of investments, in 2014 they reached 200 million and have been constant in the last several years, peaking in 2007 when we got two new mobile operators, Telenor and VIP. Since March 2015, our three operators – Telekom Serbia, Telenor and VIP, have been offering fourth generation mobile systems which are very popular right now and will surely continue their upward trend in the coming period, primarily because of the data flow and the offer of up to 100MB flow for the end users”, said Jankovic.

Having discussed the first item on its agenda, the Committee formulated the Conclusion Proposal by which it accepted the Regulatory Agency for Electronic Communication and Postal Services 2014 Activity Report and submitted it to the National Assembly for consideration.

The Committee also discussed and unanimously accepted the Working Group’s proposal on how to process the civic petitions it had received in the past period.

The sitting was chaired by Committee Chairman Milutin Mrkonjic.