Romtelecom no longer sells Internet at same price in Bucharest and in Petrosani

Romtelecom, no. 2 on the Romanian fixed line Internet services, has simplified its offer of data services, and now sells the same service at different prices, depending on competition, abandoning its strategy to charge the same fees on all “markets”, irrespective of the local context. A customer in the small town of Petrosani will therefore pay 3.5 euros per month for 2 Mbps fixed Internet, while in other towns the fee for the same service can be 4.2 or 4.9 euros. In addition to this change, Romtelecom has also cut from 7 to 3 the number of subscriptions for Internet access, thus adapting its offer to resemble that of its strongest rivals: RCS&RDS and UPC. The two operators have two and four types of Internet subscriptions respectively in their offer.
One of the main reasons for this is Romtelecom’s struggle to keep its Internet client base, which swelled from 170,000 to 800,000 at present. In 2008, a year of major growth for the economy, when Romanians bought 1 million computers, Romtelecom gained 300,000 Internet clients, many of whom signed two-year contracts, which expire in 2010. The company is of course striving not to lose them, Ovidiu Ghiman, executive manager for strategy and business development, told ZF.