Romanian companies pay $500m to RomTelecom

The telecommunications market in Romania has increased 17.64% in a year, from $1.7bn in 2001 to about $2bn in 2002, according to a survey released by Roland Berger Strategy Consultants. The Romanian telecom market had totalled $1.5bn in 2000.
Fixed telephony accounts for the largest share of the telecoms market, 47%, closely followed by mobile telephony, 40.2%. The remaining 12.8% is divided among the other types of communications: data transmissions and services such as Internet access or cable TV. Mobile telephony and data transmission, however, account for a larger share of the total compared with 2001, having increased 2-3% on the average.
In other words, the fixed telephony market is worth $940 million, while the mobile telephony market amounts to $804 million. The other types of communications total $256 million.
One in ten clients on the fixed telephony market is a legal person. Even though households account for 90% of the total clients, they only contribute 50% of the total fixed telephony sector revenues. The remaining 50% are collected from the business or corporate clients.
Moreover, the annual average earnings per corporate client amounted to $1,220 in 2001, while a household client was making RomTelecom (the only fixed telephony operator in Romania) only $135.
“Corporate clients have the highest consumption potential on the entire telecommunications market,” the survey’s authors explain.
RomTelecom had 4.1 million lines installed at the end of 2001, according to the survey and is estimated to total 4.4 million lines installed by yearend, that is 300,000 more than in 2001.
Thus, the fixed telephony penetration rate may reach 20% by yearend, compared with 18.6% in December 2001.
Still, regardless of the yearly growth of the fixed telephony market, progress is still just a series of small steps. If compared with the other European countries, Romania registers one of the lowest fixed telephony penetration rates.