Universal service
Universal Service shall represent a group of telecommunications services of specified quality, provided for all users at an affordable price, regardless of geographic position of users in the territory of Montenegro.
The affordability of prices of universal services shall be ensured by creating technical conditions for users to monitor and control their spending, or through special tariff regimes for users with low income.
Regardless of the degree of development of electronic communications market, Montenegro shall guarantee the users the possibility to use the basic Universal Service.
The scope of Universal Service shall include the following services:
- fulfillment of any reasonable request by a user for connection to public telephone network on a fixed location, which enables the usage of publicly available phone services;
- enabling a user to make local, long-distance and international calls, transfer of communications via fax and data communication by speed suitable for efficient internet access;
- providing the service of universal telephone directory and universal service for providing information on subscribers (telephone enquiry service)
- providing the service of public pay telephones, with meeting all reasonable needs of end users in terms of geographical coverage and making free emergency calls,
- ensuring some benefits for disabled end users, including access to publicly available telephone services and their use, including public pay phones, directory service and telephone enquiry service.
The scope and kind of benefits and measures shall be determined by the relevant Ministry for electronic communications, with the consent of the relevant Ministry of Social Care. The Agency shall determine the criteria for a reasonable request and the needs of end-users.
The Agency shall monitor the development of Universal Service and propose the revision of the scope of Universal Services to the Ministry.
The Government, upon the Ministry proposal, may revise the scope of Universal Services in intervals not shorter than 2 years.
Taking account of the provisions of the Law on Electronic Communications, the 2009 Operational Plan of the Agency for Electronic Communications and Postal Services, in the section related to regulation and acts that the Agency has to adopt, envisages the adoption of the following regulations:
- Regulation on the methodology for calculating the net cost of the Universal Service
- Regulation on the amount of contribution and manner of payment of universal service operators
- Act on monitoring the scope of the Universal Service.
It is also envisaged that the Agency prepares inputs, so that the relevant Ministry would issue a Regulation on the parameters of the Universal Service quality.
There are some activities related to the Universal Service being performed by operators. Thus T-Com still provides the service of rural access to its network. Rural access is provided over T-Mobile GSM network, and the price of the made call is the same as the price for other subscribers of fixed telephony under the common Price list of T-Com. The connection to rural telephony requires the payment of standard connection fee to fixed telephony and the total price of terminals for rural telephony. The number of users of rural telephony amounted to 3,173 at the end of 2007.
Ordinal number |
Municipality |
Number of rural telephones in 2007 |
1. |
Podgorica |
860 |
2. |
Bar |
343 |
3. |
Pljevlja |
415 |
4. |
Bijelo Polje |
150 |
5. |
Mojkovac |
127 |
6. |
Nikšić |
295 |
7. |
Rožaje |
114 |
8. |
Budva |
107 |
9. |
Danilovgrad |
285 |
10. |
Kolašin |
221 |
11. |
Cetinje |
137 |
12. |
Berane |
24 |
13. |
Kotor |
4 |
14. |
Plužine |
2 |
15. |
Herceg Novi |
73 |
16. |
Plav |
0 |
17. |
Tivat |
0 |
18. |
Ulcinj |
0 |
19. |
Andrijevica |
16 |
20. |
Žabljak |
0 |
21. |
Šavnik |
0 |
|
Total rural users |
3173 |
