Besides the strictly economic role which telecommunications have, contributing to the efficiency of the economy, the telecoms play a special social role, satisfying the people’s communication needs. The telecommunications have a strategic role in most of the countries also because of the enormous necessary investments in this field. For a long time, these services were (almost exclusively) the government’s “privilege”, but in the recent years we witnesses in many countries liberalizations and privatizations of national companies, when those companies become strong enough to face the competition on a highly competitive market, such as telecommunications.

The liberalization of the telecommunication sector in Romania forced the operators on this market to activate in a different environment, far more competitive. The existing rules before the liberalization stopped to exist. To be competitive on the market, a company must be able to provide quality services at accessible prices for customers. More, the rhythm of technological developments in this field is so quick that the services provided must be permanently adapted to those changes. Also, the technologies used have to be flexible enough, because the telecom companies are not specialized anymore in providing only one type of service, following a trend to become a “total” operator, providing a complex of services.

Even if this market is liberalized, the intervention of the national regulation authority is fully felt on telephony market, which made those operators to be enabled to control a certain category of their costs - the interconnection costs. While the managers’ control is restricted to the infrastructure costs (with a considerable amount) and current cost, the question is if the services’ prices can be settled on cost base, of course if the company is able to set its prices (price setters). The companies which don’t have an important market share and are forced to accept the prices settled by the market forces must focus its attention on the cost which can be controlled by them. Whatever the firm’s situation is, its goal remains the competitiveness of its prices, complemented with reaching higher financial performances.

The purpose of this paper is to make the “radiography” of the existing situation on the Romanian telecommunication market, especially on the telephony market, and to find answers to the following questions:
- Taking in consideration the period elapsed from the total liberalization, is the intervention of regulation authority in fixing the interconnection prices recommended?
- The telecom services prices based on operators costs are market competitive?