Several well-known operators in the telecom industry are interested to buy Cosmorom, RomTelecom's mobile telephony division, Communications and Information Technology minister Dan Nica yesterday said.
"At the moment, we have got several offers for Cosmorom and I can guarantee you the names are familiar to you all," Nica said, without specifying whether the parties interested were local or foreign companies. Sources on the market believe none of the mobile telephony operators in Romania (Connex, Orange or Zapp) will buy RomTelecom's division.
On the other hand, minister Nica announced the General Meeting of RomTelecom Shareholders - during which a decision on Cosmorom's future should have been made and which was supposed to take place yesterday, was postponed at the request of the Greek shareholders, OTE telecom group. He added he was yet to receive the report on Cosmorom's situation that should have been devised by Deutsche Bank and analysed by RomTelecom's shareholders in order for them to make a decision. Cosmorom's operating revenues amounted to 2.3 million euros in the third quarter this year, while losses totalled 7.4 million euros. Furthermore, the mobile telephony operator owes more than $100 million to its main equipment supplier, Greek company Intracom.
EITO (a European IT&C research institution) estimates the communications market in Romania will double in 2004 compared with 2000, reaching 4.1bn euros. The number of fixed and mobile telephony services subscribers has gone beyond 10.5 million this year, with 4.3 million fixed telephony users and 6.2 million mobile telephony users. The number of subscribers to various cable TV service providers is 3.7 million (among the top countries in Europe).
dan.dragomir@zf.ro
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