OTE considers 400-600m euro infusion in Cosmorom

Greek telecom operator OTE has chosen to rescue RomTelecom’s ailing mobile telephony division, Cosmorom, and is preparing to invest 400-600 million euros over the next five years, instead of closing the company, OTE sources were quoted as saying by Greek daily Kathimerini yesterday.

RomTelecom officials told Ziarul Financiar “no concrete decision has been made so far, as talks are going on around the Citigroup report.” OTE officials would not comment on the information.

OTE is also planning to pay the debt accumulated by Cosmorom to the Greek company Intracom, and to its Romanian-based subsidiary Intrarom, which delivered the operator equipment worth more than 100 million euros, according to the sources quoted by the Greek publication.

OTE representatives put Cosmorom’s total debts at 190 million euros, according to Kathimerini. A management team from CosmOTE (OTE’s mobile telephony arm) will be appointed to relaunch Cosmorom, which is continuing to lose ground against its competitors. The team from CosmOTE will take over the reins at Cosmorom, and CosmOTE may come up with part of the funding needed to get Cosmorom back on track.

OTE officials have not ruled out any options regarding the fate of Cosmorom, Europe’s only mobile telephone operator to lose both customers and money in the past two years. The operator has only 85,000 customers, whereas the other two GSM operators, Orange and Mobifon, can boast 4 million users each. Early this year, the Greek company hired Citigroup, the world’s largest financial group, to draft a report on the available options. According to the latest information, the report did not rule out Cosmorom’s closure.

However, Romanian officials have said repeatedly that other telecom operators had submitted offers for the takeover of Cosmorom. dan.dragomir@zf.ro