Companies and individuals from four Romanian cities, Bucharest, Cluj, Galati, and Braila, are now offered the choice to drop RomTelecom and go for another fixed telephony provider, Astral Telecom. "The fixed telephony monopoly died today in Romania," Communications minister Dan Nica proclaimed on Wednesday, during the launch of Astral Telecom's fixed telephony services.
The company is the first alternative operator that has managed to close deals for interconnecting its network with those of RomTelecom, Orange and Connex, which means Astral's subscribers can call or be called by the subscribers of the three major companies.
"We are now prepared to provide full communications services, fixed telephony included, to 40,000 clients. Our target for fixed telephony services at the moment is made up of some 20,000 of our Internet subscribers," said Astral Telecom's CEO Aurel Costea. Astral intends to have interconnection negotiations with RomTelecom over Brasov, Bacau, Craiova and Timisoara completed by the end of the year so that it could expand its fixed telephony services.
The main client category targeted by the company is therefore comprised of small and medium-sized enterprises and business clients, Internet & Data executive Dinu Malacopol says. Astral Telecom, after all, numbers three ministries, the US Embassy and Banca Transilvania among its clients.
Astral Telecom got about half a million phone numbers from the authorities to allocate to its future clients. The numbers begin with the 03 code that will identify Astral subscribers from now on. For instance, calling an Astral subscriber from a mobile phone will require the caller to dial 03 before the actual number instead of the 02 for RomTelecom. Astral subscribers can use regular digital phones for making calls.
Still, why should a fixed telephony consumer switch sides from RomTelecom to Astral? Astral's tariffs are 35% lower than those of the traditional operator (RomTelecom i.e.), the company officials say, adding new discounts are in order based on a traffic analysis.
Astral proposes three types of subscriptions that include call minutes and cost $5 (60 minutes), $10 (200 minutes), and $16 (400 minutes), as well as a thirty-channel ISDN subscription for $140. A local call minute within Astral's network costs 1-2 cents, an Astral-mobile phone call minute costs 15 cents and a national Astral-RomTelecom call minute costs between 7 and 5.7 cents. The operator has $30 million set aside for the telephony, Internet and cable service bundle, $22 million of which have already been invested. Astral Telecom is 74% held by financial investors, the most important of which is AIG New Europe Fund (25%).
This is the fund that fed $20 million as direct inflow into Astral in 2000, which allowed the operator to make significant acquisitions on the cable TV and Internet market, such as Kappa.
The remaining 26% are held by Romanian entrepreneurs, but foreign investors are still finding the company attractive.
Pentru alte știri, analize, articole și informații din business în timp real urmărește Ziarul Financiar pe WhatsApp Channels
