Czech experience for Romanian telecommunications

All analysts see the possibility of lower rates (especially for international calls) as the main benefit of the fixed telephony market deregulation. Which is perfectly true, since we already have providers offering rates of up to 4,000 ROL (Internet telephony) per call minute to the United States, for instance. However, Florin Furdui, managing director of a most discreet telecommunications company, Dial Telecom, says, when talking about the trend of certain newcomers on the market, it is a strategic mistake to offer your product at an unbelievable lower price compared to the market price, out of the blue and without any pressure from the competition, especially when your client portfolio is rather small. “If you live by the price, you will die by the price,” warns Furdui, former IT manager with ING Group Romania.
Dial Telecom Romania provides communications services, but mainly fixed telephony ever since its establishment in June 2001, when it gained its first clients. Dial Telecom is the branch of a Central European holding that operates in Slovakia and Czech Republic and has technical offices in Warsaw, Budapest and Vienna. The holding is controlled by a group of private Czech investors, has about 2,000 clients in its portfolio, a staff of 100 and posted $15 million turnover in 2002.
Since the corporate policy prohibits releasing financial results by branch, Furdui may only say that Dial Telecom’s 2002 turnover in Romania has seven figures (in USD) and revenues were 99% derived from fixed telephony.
“We hope to broaden our streams of revenue and cut this share down to 80% in 2003,” Furdui explains. Dial Telecom’s 2003 goals are three times higher revenues and a matching operating income growth.
Dial Telecom has chosen its clients from the business and institutional sectors (ING Romania, CommerzBank, Athenee Palace Hilton, Karstadt Qwelle, and embassies).
Since its clients are corporate only, Dial Telecom chose the TDM (copper-fibre optics network) technology, which allows providing PSTN quality services, as preferred by RomTelecom and by all the major operators, as well. The voice signal is digitally transmitted, with a virtual circuit set aside for exclusive use by the two parties engaged in a conversation, so that they can have a high-quality constant voice traffic.
Dial Telecom is getting ready to cover the entire fixed telephony service range for the business sector this year, local and intercounty inclusive. It will also offer telephone numbers to its clients, as it has already applied for 100,000 such numbers.