Tough price competition and recession force telecom operators to make investments again

Recession and the fierce price competition in Romania, along with the rising sales of mobile data, have led to a situation forcing major telecom operators to give up their 2009 ‘wait and see’ strategy to find ways to boost revenues, say the representatives of Hewlett Packard (HP), the world’s biggest IT company. “Amid recession, telecom competition has tightened up in Romania, so that operators are now open to discussions. They’re interested in subjects such as network efficiency boosting, the development of new income sources and the optimisation of the relationship between clients and store or call centre people,” Erwan Menard, head of HP’s global unit of solutions for communication and media companies, told ZF. Has any contract been signed after Menard’s meetings with several domestic telecom operators? HP official provided no details, but said the atmosphere on the market is open to investments. “Operators have given up the strategy of ‘waiting to see what happens’.” Major telecom operators of Romania, such as Orange, Vodafone, Cosmote and Romtelecom had annual investment budgets of 100-200m euros prior to the crisis.