Mobile telephony boom in Romania

Mobile telephony operators on the Romanian market jointly attracted over 450,000 new customers in the first quarter of 2004, according to Communications minister Dan Nica. At the end of March, 7,350,151 Romanians were using mobile telephony services, as compared to 6.9 million on December 31, 2003.

At the end of last year, the gap between the two main operators, Connex and Orange, was quite narrow as regards the number of customers. Connex had 3.45 million users, while 3.3 million Romanians were using Orange services. The rest, up to 6.9 million, were Zapp and Cosmorom users. Neither Connex, nor Orange representatives would reveal the exact number of new customers they attracted between January-March 2004, but they will make the respective figures public this month when they are to report financial results registered in the first quarter.

For the time being, both operators are doing their best to win new customers both for the voice and for the data segments.

“We have reached 461 business customers on the segment of integrated services (voice, data), we will expand NetZone services allowing wireless access to the Internet, we have 28 GPRS roaming deals. We will focus more on content considering that GPRS and EDGE are now available,” said Ted Lattimore, Connex chairman and COO. The company has not made an official announcement linked to the launch of certain EDGE services.

Connex anticipates it will exceed, this year, the four million users threshold, as well as one billion dollars in investments. “Connex generates 1% of Romania’s GDP,” Lattimore also told the Telecom 2004 workshop organised by Business Media Group.

Orange says it will launch EDGE services this year. “In 2004, we shall have EDGE in four big cities, namely Bucharest, Timisoara, Cluj and Brasov,” said Yves Gauthier, commercial director of Orange Romania.
iuliana.susanu@zf.ro