RCS & RDS CEO: We have invested $1bn in three years

The biggest telecom company created by a Romanian national has reached more than 8 million subscribers in the region and posted $274 million operating income, while revenues reached 710 million dollars last year, says Alexandru Oprea, the company's CEO.

RCS & RDS, the telecom company created by Zoltan Teszari - a young entrepreneur from Oradea in the nineties has become one of the biggest telecom companies in Central and Eastern Europe. "We have more than 8 million subscriptions for Internet, telephony and TV services," Alexandru Oprea, RCS & RDS CEO of thirteen years, one of the longest-standing executives on the local market, told ZF in an exclusive interview.

RCS' biggest markets are Romania and Hungary but it also provides services in Slovakia, the Czech Republic, Croatia, Serbia and Spain.

The increase in the customer base, Oprea says, has also been driven by investments that compare to those made by giants like Orange, Vodafone and Deutsche Telecom/OTE, even though the Romania-based operator derived 726 million dollars in revenues in 2008, its best year, lower than those of its international rivals.

"Over the last three years - from 2007 through 2009, we invested more than one billion dollars in development, especially in infrastructure," Alexandru Oprea told ZF.