What the domain pays and how big it is
Someone employed in electronic communications earned around 21,500 lei gross a month at the end of 2025, against a national average of roughly 16,400. The figure belongs to division 61 and it is the one shown in the tiles above, because that is where nearly everyone in the domain works. In division 60 — radio and television broadcasting — pay is around 18,600.
Both sit far below the section they belong to. Information and communication shows around 37,100 lei, but that average belongs to the software companies, not to telecom operators and still less to television stations. A payroll budgeted on the section figure would be double the reality in this domain.
The two halves are not comparable in size either. Division 61 reported 279 economic agents for 2025, 4,369 employees and sales revenue of 8.6 billion lei. Division 60 reported 75 economic agents, 1,024 employees and 128.23 million lei, down from 175.09 million in 2024.
That last figure is worth reading twice. All of the radio and television registered in Moldova earns less in a year than one mid-sized software company, and the sum fell by nearly a third in a single year. Employment in division 61 fell 3.4% against the same period a year earlier.
The practical conclusion is that this is not a domain you enter for margin. You enter it for infrastructure, which amortises over years, or for influence, which does not appear in the accounts at all.
Why it matters that the law changed in January 2026
Until 31 December 2025 the Electronic Communications Law 241/2007 applied. From 1 January 2026 Law 72/2025 applies, transposing part of the European Electronic Communications Code. The old law was repealed the same day, with one exception: chapter VIII stays in force until 13 May 2027.
Three things changed for anyone opening a company now.
The notification became a genuine formality. Article 17(2) says supply is subject “only to a general authorisation, carried out free of charge in the form of a standardised notification”, and paragraph (3) adds that exercising the rights flowing from it requires “no decision or explicit ruling and no other individual administrative act”. There is no waiting period, unlike road transport, where the notification to the sector agency requires ten working days before the first journey.
The authority changed its name. The new law says “National Agency for Regulation in Communications” — without “electronic and information technology”. The agency now presents itself as ARCOM. Guides and forms still writing ANRCETI describe an authority that no longer carries that name, and that is a good freshness test for any material you read about this domain.
Licences remain only on scarce resources. Radio frequencies and telephone numbers are state assets distributed in finite quantity, so they are licensed. The rest is not. And where the interference risk is low, the Agency may decide that a band is used under the general authorisation or under no regime at all — article 48(7) gives it that power expressly.
What to know before you start
In audiovisual, who owns the company matters more than what it broadcasts
This is the peculiarity of the domain and the reason a broadcasting licence file resembles no other permit file in Moldova.
Article 28 of the Audiovisual Media Services Code prohibits a named list of beneficial owners: Parliament, the President, the Government, central bodies, local authorities, publicly funded institutions and commercial organisations, political parties and socio-political organisations, trade unions and religious cults. The prohibition runs through intermediate companies too: a company founded by any of them may not be a beneficial owner either.
On top of that come per-person ceilings. A natural person may be the beneficial owner of at most two television services and at most two radio services. Anyone holding more than 50% of one company in the field may not hold more than 20% of another under Moldovan jurisdiction. And a person holding office in the legislative, executive or judicial administration, or an elective office in a party, has no voting rights in an audiovisual company where they are a founder or shareholder.
Selling shares goes past the Council before it goes past the registrar
The practical consequence of article 28(11): if you want to sell a holding in a company that holds a broadcasting licence, or in the company controlling it, the buyer needs the prior approval of the Audiovisual Council. Not subsequent — prior. The registrar records the change in the State Register of Legal Entities only once that approval is produced.
It is a restriction a buyer used to ordinary SRL transactions does not have in mind, and it can block a sale already negotiated. The single exception is acquisition by succession, reported to the Council afterwards, within 30 days.
There is one more prohibition aimed at the structuring itself: article 28(12) forbids a company applying for or holding a licence from using a third party name in a way that circumvents the ownership rules or audiovisual pluralism. Nominees, in other words, are anticipated by the law.
The annual report is neither optional nor an accounting document
Media service providers file an annual activity report with the Audiovisual Council by 31 March, on an approved form, electronically. It contains the names and citizenship of the beneficial owners, the ownership and share capital structure, the budget of the service and its sources of funding, and the delivery of the service concept over the previous year. It is published on the provider own website within three days of approval.
It is a document about ownership and funding transparency, not a financial report, and the accountant cannot complete it alone.
The network and the programming are two authorisations, not one
A cable operator building its own network and selling a channel package needs both: the notification to the Agency for the network and the retransmission authorisation from the Audiovisual Council for the channels. Article 17(18) of Law 72/2025 says so directly — a network provider may broadcast or retransmit audiovisual programmes only after completing the authorisation procedures in the audiovisual field.
The retransmission authorisation is issued without competition, for ten years, within 30 days of the request. But the channel list is a separate document: the package of retransmitted media services is approved by the Council within 15 working days and re-approved whenever it changes. A package that changes often means a file that is refiled often.
The intelligence service has a standing say
Article 17(27)–(29) requires providers of networks and services, whatever their form of ownership, to inform the Security and Intelligence Service in advance of any network change that could affect the continuity of special investigative measures, and to give at least six months notice of any planned modernisation or extension. The notification carries a detailed description of the technical characteristics, and the Service confirms receipt within five working days.
The six-month term is the one that catches people out. A network expansion plan has to be thought through more than half a year ahead, not for technical reasons but for compliance ones.
For both branches the answer is an SRL, but for different reasons.
In electronic communications the notification is filed by a legal person or a sole trader, so the form is not an obstacle. The SRL wins because liability stays limited, and infrastructure is frequently financed through credit and leasing, where the counterparty wants a legal person.
In audiovisual the SRL wins for an additional reason: the whole ownership regime in article 28 is written in terms of share capital, voting rights, shareholders and members down to the level of the natural person. A sole trader — which is not a legal person and whose holder is liable without limit — fits badly with a file in which the Council asks for the list of beneficial owners and approves every change of holding in advance.
A joint-stock company makes sense only at scale, when capital comes from several investors. It carries a disadvantage of its own here, though: the broadcasting licence must contain the identification data of shareholders down to the natural person, except for shareholders that are joint-stock companies with bearer shares or listed on international exchanges — a narrow exception an ordinary Moldovan company does not reach.
