TELFOR, an international regional Conference in the areas of Telecommunications and ICT, is being held for the 26th time on November 20-21, 2018 in Sava Centar in Belgrade.

Dr Vladica Tintor, director of RATEL, made an opening presentation on the importance of regulation for the telecommunications market development, explaining data on telecommunications and postal markets in the Republic of Serbia for 2017, trends in particular market segments, RATEL’s planned projects and regulatory activities during 2018.

For the first time, mobile network benchmarking results for 2018 obtained through RATEL’s benchmarking project involving mobile operators Telekom Srbija, Telenor and Vip mobile were presented. This project of service quality testing began in October 2017 and its results have highlighted significant progress that the three operators made in the domain of network service quality, currently at the level of the most developed European countries. This testifies to the strong competition on the Serbian market, as well as seriousness and committment in respect of investments in networks and quality of service offered to end users.

The results of other ongoing projects were presented as well, such as: issuance of electronic licenses successfully launched in 2018, with an expected number of e-licenses next year to surpass the number of those issued in hard copy; RATEL NetTest (http://nettest.ratel.rs) – an application for quality testing and measurement of Internet connection speed available to users as of 2016, additionally improved this year; database on available electronic communications network capacities established in 2016, presently collecting detailed relevant geographic and structural data; followed by presentation of further plans for improvement, such as launching of a portal for comparative overview of retail prices of electronic communications services and the further development of the system for continuous electromagnetic field measurement – EMF RATEL.

In the regulatory field, activities pertaining to user protection, particularly in terms out-of-court dispute mediation, were emphasized. The number of positively resolved user complaints on an annual basis in on a constant rise and so are the activities regarding market analysis, having resulted in a new Decision on designation of relevant markets subject to ex-ante regulation („Official Gazette of RS“, No. 58/18).

As a conclusion, preparatory regulatory activities for the implementation of 5G technology were announced, as this is one of the topics of this year’s TELFOR panel discussion, where RATEL will take part along with operators’ representatives.