Within the competences provided for under the Law on Electronic Communications, as of 2006 RATEL established and enabled access to a publicly available registry of network and service operators. Only specific types of networks and services as defined by the applicable regulation can be entered in the Registry for recordkeeping.

Since then, according to the Registry data, the number of operators and services has been on the rise until 2013, when the number of operators started to decline, mainly due to acquisitions of smaller providers by the bigger ones.

As for the year on year number of services in the Registry, it multiplied on account of more competitive offers. The most popular services offered in the electronic communications market by the majority of registered operators are Internet access and Internet services.

The analysis revealed that the majority of operators providing value-added services (VAS) had been entered in the Registry between 2016 and 2018, following which the numbers started to drop, mainly due to an avalanche of users’ complaints and remarks.

As a conclusion, the analysis, encompassing the period 2006-2020, has shown that the number of entries and deletions in/from the Registry regarding networks and services proved to be an outward result of market movements, as well as RATEL’s monitoring activities.

The year 2020 saw a record number of deletions regarding networks and services, which is a logical result of the acquisitions occurred during 2019 and 2020.