Compania Nationala de Cai Ferate (National Railway Company - CFR) is intently preparing for the moment when the telecommunications market is completely liberalised, as it wants to complete an offer of integrated services of digital, voice, data and image communications.
Furthermore, starting 2005, the passengers will have the possibility to connect their mobile terminals (laptop, phone) to the Internet.
"The moment the liberalisation of the domestic market comes into effect, that is January 1, 2003, CFR will be able to provide modern and diversified telecommunications services to both railway transport operators as well as to other clients on the Romanian market," Mihai Necolaiciuc, CFR general manager, told Ziarul Financiar.
Company officials say that although the network will service CFR mainly, it will be possible to lease communication channels that can transport 64 Kbps- 155 Mbps.
"In order to provide voice, data and image communications services, CFR will have to apply for a telecom operator licence from the Ministry of Communications and Information Technology, of course," Lucian Milea, head of CFR's Telecommunications Agency, said. "We have not received a financial partnership offer from the leading European operators yet," Milea added.
CFR's telecommunications network upgrade started in 1998 with three investment projects worth $37 million, with funding coming from loans from the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development and the World Bank.
As for equipment suppliers, they were selected based on international tenders in 1998 and 1999. The winners were Siemens (for the project of fibre optics cable network and for the digital transmission network) and Alcatel for ISDN.
Alcatel and CFR early this year signed a 12 million-euro deal, enabling the French company to provide the Romanian party with digital switchboards providing for voice, data and image transmission.
The moment of complete liberalisation of the Romanian telecommunications market, set for January 1, 2003 by RomTelecom's privatisation contract, will be the start of a fierce competition on the voice, data and image transmission market.
The introduction of the new technologies and of the various combinations of those technologies is already making the older hardline telephony/ mobile telephony division seem obsolete.
The local market, still insufficiently covered by communications and infrastructure services, will be the battle scene for operators that have a tradition on this market - RomTelecom, Mobil Rom, MobiFon, as well as a series of companies making their debut with respect to commercial telecommunications services - CFR, Transelectrica, SNRadiocomunicatii, Astral, RCS and PCNet.
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