Strike and counterstrike on international telephony market

The deregulation of the Romanian telecommunications market pushes for a change in the strategy of the two major mobile telephony operators, Connex and Orange Romania.
As telecom analysts had estimated, Connex and Orange are carefully watching any moves on two segments mainly, which look extremely profitable when drawing the line in a balance sheet: international calls and business customers. Whenever one of the two announces a tariff cut or a tempting offer, the other does not take too long to strike back.
Until now, the two had the highest tariffs for international calls on the domestic market, which can be explained by the advantages mobility has to offer.
Connex announced it would give up using RomTelecom’s infrastructure for making international calls early in January. A week later, it announced the users of Kamarad prepaid cards could make calls to numbers in the fixed telephony network at low tariffs.
Orange struck back at the end of last month. It cut tariffs for international calls by up to 45% and started charging on a per-second basis for international calls. It also announced a new service for small and medium-sized enterprises mainly, early this month.
It was Connex’ turn to charge the market several days ago. It said it would launch a new international fixed access service for business customers and a new single rate for international mobile calling for all mobile customers.
“Deregulation is now making it easier for Connex to provide more integrated communications services to its business customers. By integrating our mobile with fixed access international/national and data services, we can create single high quality private communications networks and provide real value to our business customers,” said Michele Gaudette, Vice President of Marketing, Connex.
The new service for business customers, Connex International allows making calls from the fixed phone in the customer’s office, with the call carried by Connex’ infrastructure. This makes a call minute cheaper by up to 65 cents, as rates start at 20 cents/minute for Canada and US and at 30 cents/minute for Europe.
The new single rate for international mobile calls for all mobile customers is 85 cents/minute regardless of the destination or the service used by the Connex customer.
Both services will be introduced starting February 15, 2003.