CDMA (Code Division Multiple Access) mobile telephony operator Zapp has invested $60 million in the expansion of its territorial coverage over the past few months, according to Cuneyt Turktan, Zapp's President of the Board of Directors. Turktan added Zapp would come to cover 85% of Romania's population by yearend.
Zapp has been engaged in a powerful marketing campaign to support the development of its mobile telephony and data service over the last few months.
The company management estimated to gain some 70,000 customers for the Zapp service by the end of the year. This goal would not be hard to attain, "because we are in line with the previous estimates," Turktan told Ziarul Financiar.
As for 2003, Zapp is planning to gain 100,000 more clients. "We are not looking for millions of clients, we are not a mass service provider, but a company that sells high-quality data services for the business community. We want to offer these clients a series of new services in 2003 to help their businesses," Turktan said.
Any further investment of the company will directly depend on the number of clients the company will gain. "We are ready to keep investing on the Romanian market, but at the same time we do not want to lose the service quality and this is why we chose this strategy," the official specified.
Cuneyt Turktan has recently demonstrated the services of the mobile telephony operator Zapp in Galati, Timisoara and Cluj as part of a tour set to continue early next year.
"We want to show the local business communities that Zapp is a trustworthy partner, a company with a dynamic development, constantly preoccupied with meeting its clients' needs by improving the quality and accessibility of the products and services it offers," Cuneyt Turktan said.
The integrated digital mobile, voice and data communications service Zapp was launched in Romania in December 2001 and entailed a start-up investment of $150 million from the parent company Telemobil.
At that time, the two major GSM 900 operators Connex (MobiFon) and Orange were already on the market, as was RomTelecom's Cosmorom, operating on the 1800 MHz frequency.
Zapp was the first CDMA mobile telephony operator in Europe.
Unlike Cosmorom, Zapp was much quicker to realise a battle with Orange and Connex is a battle lost and several months after launch changed both its strategy and management.
From that moment on, Zapp has focused on attracting clients for the mobile data services and solutions, instead of stressing on voice services only, with Cuneyt Turktan, former president of Turkcell, Turkey's leading mobile telephony operator, taking the reins.
Zapp's main shareholder is Inquam London (99.5%), through its Inquam Romania branch. Inquam is a private international company specialising in wireless network services.
US-based telecommunications company Qualcomm is one of Inquam's shareholders with 47% in the capital. Another major shareholder of Inquam is Omnia Holdings Ltd., an investment fund affiliated to the Saudi Oger Group, which runs business projects worth more than $70bn throughout the entire world.
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