KPNQwest comes to Romania

European data communication and Internet hosting services leader KPNQwest has officially opened its offices in Romania. KPNQwest president Jack McMaster says the company wants to give Romania access to a new European Union of high-speed data communications.

KPNQwest has been operating in Romania under its own name since March last year. Its experience in Romania goes back to 1993, though, when it was part of EUnet, considered the most powerful ISP on the Romanian market.

KPNQwest Romania is currently operating in eight cities (Bucharest, Brasov, Ploiesti, Bacau, Constanta, Craiova, Timisoara and Cluj) providing local users with access to all specific services in Europe.

The company is planning to expand to other nine cities (Arad, Oradea, Baia-Mare, Sibiu, Pitesti, Piatra-Neamt, Iasi and Galati) this year, in a total investment of about $500,000, which does not include the money allocated to the development of the infrastructure of the centre in Bucharest and of the hardware and software platform for Internet, e-banking and database services.

“Complete liberalisation of the market in Romania (i.e. January 2003) will allow top players in the field to make massive investments for the creation of a modern infrastructure, as it has happened in the entire Europe after all,” Jack McMaster said.

Romanian telecoms market is growing and KPNQwest has identified a series of fields for providing specialised services (Internet, website hosting) to a very large number of clients, according to McMaster.

This year’s strategy also includes launching IP-VPN (Internet Protocol-Virtual Private Network) services aimed at national or multinational coverage companies. The new services will allow company clients to access Internet and Intranet communications.

KPNQwest Romania general manager Marius Panait says the company will keep providing basic services (i.e. Internet access), as well as added-value services for business-to-business mainly.

KPNQwest Romania cybercentre takes up some 100 sqm and is located downtown Bucharest, within the Bucharest Financial Plaza on Calea Victoriei.

“KPNQwest Romania will provide pan-European data, image and voice communication solutions and services based on Internet Protocol,” Panait added.