Member States of the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) elected Mr Houlin Zhao of China as Secretary-General of ITU for a four-year term. The election took place in Busan, South Korea, during the 19^th ITU Plenipotentiary Conference. Mr. Zhao was elected with the votes of 152 countries present.

The Bulgarian national delegation headed by Mr. Veselin Bozhkov, PhD, Chairman of CRC, supported the candidature of Mr. Zhao.

Mr. Zhao was born in 1950. He graduated from Nanjing University of Posts and Telecommunications in China in 1975. Mr. Zhao received a Master degree of Science in telematics from the University of Essex, United Kingdom. From 1999 to 2006, he held the position of Director of the Telecommunication Standardization Bureau (TSB). In 2006 he was elected Deputy Secretary-General of ITU at the Plenipotentiary Conference in Antalya and was re-elected for this position for a consecutive second term at the 2010 Guadalajara Plenipotentiary Conference.

On 2 October 2014, on the eve of the 19^th ITU Plenipotentiary Conference, Mr. Zhao made a visit to Sofia at the invitation of Mr. Veselin Bozhkov.

The visit was an expression of the excellent relations, the active collaboration and the constructive dialogue between CRC and ITU – the largest international organization in the field of telecommunications, having a statute of a United Nations specialized agency.

By its Decision № 623 of 11.09.2014 the Communications Regulation Commission launched a public consultation procedure on a Draft Decision on amendment and supplement of the Functional specifications for non-geographic numbers portability in the event of change of the respective service provider.

Dear Ladies and Gentlemen

The European Commission launches its “Connected Communities” initiative – an umbrella for several systems designed to connect towns, cities, local broadband partnerships and operators to the technical advice they need to get access to funding and to develop tailored business models for deployment of high-speed broadband networks. The initiative is open to all municipalities, regional or national local partnerships and broadband operators. Interested parties are invited to submit to the European Commission their concepts and plans for broadband deployment projects. Applications shall be received before 15 October 2014 and the best concepts will receive the Commission's "seal of approval" and access to more in-depth support.

More information on “Connected Communities” initiative can be found at the following addresses:

·       Press release: http://europa.eu/rapid/press-release_IP-14-819_bg.htm  

·       Memo: http://europa.eu/rapid/press-release_MEMO-14-474_en.htm

·       Application for interested communities: https://ec.europa.eu/digital-agenda/en/node/70418

At its session held on 31^st July 2014, CRC adopted the following position on the application of art. 260, para. 4 of the Law on Electronic Communications when providing prepaid services:

The itemized listing of the telephone services used under art. 260, para. 4 of the Law on Electronic Communications should be provided to all subscribers, on request, regardless of whether they use services under the terms of a subscription contract or they use prepaid services.

By its Decision No 285 of 13.06.2014 the Communications Regulation Commission (CRC) launched a public consultation procedure on a Draft Decision on imposing obligations for publication of information concerning the quality of mobile services.

The full text of the draft is published on the Internet site of CRC’s website  www.crc.bg  under the Section „Public consultations”.

The Communications Regulation Commission

invests in the qualification of its employees

The activities were presented at the meeting, the main part of them being trainings from the catalog of the Institute of Public Administration on the following subjects:

І.        Management skills in the administration;

ІІ.       Human resources management;

ІІІ.      Effective communications in  public administration;

ІV.     Legal aspects and management of the administrative activity. Prevention and combating corruption;

V.      Financial and economic management;

VІ.     Е-government: establishing, skills;

VІІ.    Specialized foreign language training.

The financing of activities is 100% from the Operational Programme "Administrative Capacity" and the total sum amounts to 89 991 BGN. The activities took place during the last 12 months - since 10.07.2013 and this is actually the duration of the project itself.

For this period the CRC employees, which are the target group of the project, have completed 409 training courses of the Institute of Public Administration.

This is the second successful CRC project with this operational programme. The first one - „Extending the information system „Licensing and registers” has been declared “best practice” by OPAC. Through this project 39 electronic services are provided to the citizens and the business as part of the future e-government.