Romtelecom net profit up to 19.8m euros

Romtelecom’s net profit rose by 5.3% to 19.8 million euros in the first quarter compared with the same time in 2006 and revenues went down to 222.1 million euros from 222.9 million euros, according to the quarterly report of the OTE group, the majority shareholder of the company. Revenues are 7.7 million euros lower than in the fourth quarter of last year, while net profit went up by 6.2 million euros. The number of landlines fell 16% compared with the first quarter of 2006, to 3,222,448 units, and the volume of traffic in the local network fell 27%, as a result of the combined effect of the shift of customers to mobile telephony services and the strong competition from the alternative operators, according to OTE. Romtelecom is seeing serious competition from RCS & RDS and UPC Romania, while Vodafone and Orange have recently started plans to allocate fixed telephony numbers to customers, thus tapping into one of the most profitable market segments of the former monopolistic company.