A nearly dead mobile telephony operator, Cosmorom, was yesterday relaunched under the new brand of Cosmote and announced an aggressive marketing policy chiefly based on lower tariffs than its competitors and even on giving phones to subscribers for free.
Cosmote will benefit from about half a billion-euro investments in infrastructure development and in territorial coverage over the next few years. The importance of this relaunch was clearly indicated by the presence of Panagis Vourloumis, the chairman of OTE, Cosmote shareholder, in Bucharest.
"It''s our reputation at stake. We bet our name on it," Evangelos Martigopoulos, Cosmote Greece CEO told ZIARUL FINANCIAR. Romania is the first country except Greece where the mobile telephony firm is using the same name as at home, the Cosmote officials said.
The company hopes the aggressive relaunch during the holiday season will lead to a relatively fast-paced growth in the number of clients. "We want to get the same results that have become a standard in Eastern Europe for those companies that entered as the third player on the mobile telephony market," Martigopoulos stated.
He specified the average in such cases was a market share of about 15% after the first year of operations. "The situation is completely different in Romania compared with other countries; for instance, we entered as number two in Bulgaria and came to hold a 40% market share in four years," he said.
The relaunch will be based on an equally aggressive retail distribution.
The company''s sales network includes 10 exclusive shops, 75 exclusive RomTelecom and 175 commercial partners'' shops, including the Germanos stores. Moreover, the prepaid cards will be available through thousands of additional points of sale across the country, while the company has a dedicated direct sales team for its corporate customers.
Cosmote''s weak point at the moment is territorial coverage - 55%, which means 80% of the population, or the big cities and main roads in Romania. "The next step will be increasing national coverage. More than 70% of the territory will be covered by the end of June 2006, which means 90% of the population," Nikolaos Tsolas, Cosmote Romania CEO stated. He added the operator was interested in getting a 3G licence. "We are expecting the authorities to hold the auction and we will then launch 3G services, most likely in 2006," the Cosmote Romania official added.
The operator yesterday presented the telephone offers, as well as the prepaid and post-paid contract service offers. At the same time it launched a special holidays offer, which it hopes will attract more clients.
"Charges for calls via the prepaid Cosmote card, which is youth oriented, are up to 47% cheaper than those of our competitors," Nikolaos Tsolas stated. One minute of call comes with a flat charge of 16 eurocents, while a SMS costs 5 eurocents. victor@zf.ro ; dan.dragomir@zf.ro
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