Astral Telecom enters RomTelecom's turf

Astral Telecom is very likely to become the first company to throw the phones installed by RomTelecom out of some average Romanians’ homes. Or, if looking at this from a more optimistic standpoint, the first one to install fixed phones where the national operator has failed to do so for various reasons. The group announced it was the first to conclude an internetworking agreement with RomTelecom, which means it was granted access to the latter’s infrastructure. It can now proceed to testing, which will happen next month, while the commercial launch of this service is scheduled for September. Astral Telecom is planning to telephonically “deregulate” four cities – Bucharest, Cluj, Galati and Braila this year, and come to total 170,000 clients by January 1, 2004. The expansion of the service nationwide is scheduled for next year. Still, before the service could be launched this September, the details of the contracts for interconnection with the mobile telephony operators need to be worked out, as the contracts have not been concluded yet.

Astral Telecom ($40-$45 million in 2003 turnover target) will provide fixed telephony services through its hybrid fibre optics-coax network, already serving more than 650,000 cable TV and Internet subscribers. It also has major corporate clients for data transmissions. How much will a word travelling through Astral’s wires cost – an even more interesting issue considering RomTelecom is contemplating a rise in local and intercounty tariffs? Astral’s general manager Aurel Costea says “we cannot provide any details about our tariff policy any sooner than August.” victor@zf.ro