Ghiman, Romtelecom: First acquisition target will be small cable TV providers

Romtelecom, one of the biggest communications operators in Romania, will wage an all-out war against rivals RCS&RDS and UPC over the next three years in order to accelerate growth on the TV services and Internet markets, with the strategy including both acquisitions and aggressive commercial offers, Ovidiu Ghiman, executive manager in charge of the company's strategy and business development, told ZF in an exclusive interview.
The company controlled by OTE (Greece) and Deutsche Telekom (Germany) groups will primarily seek to buy as many of the 500 small cable TV providers that held around 16% of the TV market (900,000 clients) at the end of last year. "There are hundreds of local operators with thousands of clients, which can be bought," Ghiman says.
Romtelecom, however, will also bring aggressive commercial packages onto the market, which, apart from TV, will also include fixed telephony, Internet, and mobile communications services from the group's mobile telephony operator. "We are not just talking about a new package of TV services meant to attract clients but about a joint effort."