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Romtelecom becomes no. 2 on TV market

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29.03.2011, 23:53 34

Romtelecom has become no. 2 on the Romanian TV services market,leaving behind the Americans at UPC, after it bought the nearly80,000 satellite TV clients of Digital Cable Systems (AKTA).

The 80,000 clients of AKTA, an operator controlled by Americanfund AIG, bring Romtelecom to around 1.22 million clients on the TVmarket, compared with UPC's around 1.15 million. The Americans atUPC now also lost the no. 2 position on the TV market, after in thesummer of 2008 they had lost to RCS the no. 1 position on cable TV.The company did not specify the value of the deal, but consideringa price of 80 euros per subscriber accepted by Romtelecom at thebeginning of this month when it took over another operator - BoomTV, AIG would collect 6.4 million euros.

Romtelecom, which used to hold monopoly over the landlinemarket, returned to the TV market in November 2006 through thesatellite TV platform Dolce, but the decisive step towards leavingUPC behind was the launch in 2008 of its own cable company(NextGen) and its more than 12 acquisitions in the past two years,overseen from behind the scenes by Ovidiu Ghiman, RCS&RDS'sformer commercial director, currently one of the strategists of thelandline operator.

Romtelecom, which is controlled by OTE (Greece) and DeutscheTelekom (Germany), however, remains significantly behindRomanian-held RCS&RDS on the TV market, with the latter havingat least 3 million clients on the pay TV market, according tomarket estimates. RCS&RDS, held by businessman Zoltan Teszariin Oradea, is in negotiations to acquire UPC.

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