The monopoly of national telecoms operator RomTelecom could come to an end as soon as this month, way before the deregulation of this market, scheduled for January 1, 2003, as Societatea Nationala de Radiocomunicatii (National Radiocommunications Company - SNR) is joining the race for voice transmissions.
According to SNR chairman, Gabriel Grecu, attending the Communications Day at CERF 2001 on Wednesday, the company at the end of this month will launch a pilot project, by which any Bucharest inhabitant may request to have a broadband radio communication equipment installed, which provides voice, data and video transmissions, an alternative to cable or fibre optics transmissions.
To promote the project, the equipment will be offered for testing free of charge, and, in case it proves successful, the network will expand throughout the whole country over the next few years.
At present, SNR teams are still working on setting the tariffs the company will charge for the services of its new network.
"One thing I can say for sure and that is we'll have an aggressive price strategy, so as to gain as much of the market segments as we possibly can," Grecu said. IT and Communications minister Dan Nica provided more details saying that "tariffs will surely be half those operated by RomTelecom at the moment."
Where technical details are concerned, the national network will operate on 26GHz, for which SNR obtained a licence last year, while work will be performed on Ericsson equipment.
On the other hand, RomTelecom will attempt to strike back in the next few months, by launching new voice communication services and by investing $524 million this year.
"We'll be offering voice-over-IP services in a matter of two or three months, for an about 25% discount," George Theodorou, RomTelecom's commercial manager, maintained.
He says an Internet Service Provider (ISP) is due for launch next month, in which RomTelecom will hold the controlling interests at least.
The new company, to be known as RTel, will provide cheap Internet and e-commerce services through RomTelecom's infrastructure, in a start-up investment of about $25-30 million.
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