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Greek investors have challenging aims for 2008 - views of telecoms chief officials

Greece ranks 9th by foreign investors in Romania, with 4,102 companies registered. Most of the Greek companies are deeply rooted in the Romanian business environment, bringing a significant contribution to some key economic sectors such as banking, telecommunications, constructions, the food industry.

Daily Nine O'Clock interviewed several Greek investors in Romania, asking them to answer the following three questions: 1. When did you enter the Romanian market and which are the projects you've successfully completed so far? 2. What are your goals for 2008? 3. How would you characterize the Romanian business environment and the relationship with the local authorities? Here are the answers offered by chief officials in the telecoms sector. Stefanos Theocharopoulos, CEO COSMOTE Romania 1. 2007 was definitely a year of achievements, as Cosmote managed to raise GSM coverage to 98 percent of the population by the end of the year and posted an important increase in the company's market share. The exclusive launch of the innovative i-mode service is also one of the milestones achieved last year, as well as rapidly growing our customer base at over 3.6 million users. Cosmote has managed to become in only two years of operation the fastest growing mobile operator on the Romanian market, both in terms of market share and retail chain, having today one of the broadest commercial networks, with over 850 outlets - corporate stores, valuable partnerships such as Germanos, Romtelecom, Internity and many independent dealers. 2. Cosmote is moving to its second phase of development and targets set for this year are to reach EBITDA positive, while also ensuring continuous growth in terms of market share, customer satisfaction and overall quality of services. Competitiveness on all segments remains one of the top priorities, including special emphasis on the business segment. The key words for 2008 are: be competitive on all segments, customer's satisfaction, market share acquisition, Common projects with Romtelecom. 3. The Romanian market is witnessing an economic boom and there is still significant room for growth across all business sectors for the upcoming few years - therefore, Romania will continue to be the destination of foreign direct investment from Greece, as well as other countries. In 2007, Cosmote ranked sixth among the top foreign investors in Romania, ahead of all other telecommunications operators, according to the official financial data provided by the Romanian National Trade Registry. The Group invested in Romania about 450 million euro over the interval 2005 - 2007 period. Cosmote Romania reached a 3.6 million-strong customer base at the end of 2007, being the mobile operator with the most dynamic growth on the Romanian market. *** Yorgos Ioannidis, Romtelecom General Manager 1. OTE Group entered Romtelecom shareholders in 1998. During the last years Romtelecom invested more than EUR 1.5 bln in the development and modernization of the company. Since the liberalization of the local telecommunication market in 2003, Romtelecom transformed from a traditional landline telephony operator into a complex IT&C services provider, adding to its services portfolio internet access and data services, IT elitist services as well as content services like Dolce satellite TV. In 2007 alone the company put about EUR 200 million in the development and modernization of its network infrastructure and improvement of customer care services. 2007 is also the year in which a good strategy, namely the launch of the Customer 1st project, accomplished a true turnaround for the company. The first visible result of the project was the stopping of the migration of clients from landline telephony. November 2007 was the first month in at least 3 years when the company had net additions in terms of the number of clients. On the satellite television segment, Dolce had also one of the biggest growth rates in the region, not only in Romania, reaching 20 percent of the DTH market, close to 400,000 customers. Customer 1st offered residential clients more benefits for the same or even less money. Romtelecom had as focus also the business clients who started to benefit from customized offers and of a dedicated call-center meant to ensure a high level of customer service for this category of clients. Moreover, Romtelecom started to offer SLA for business voice customers, which is the company's guarantee for quality services, business continuity and prompt intervention. The standard SLA option is offered for free to all voice customers. 2. The main objectives for 2008 are to stabilize, and even increase the clients base for landline telephony and also strive to maintain the same strong growth on the data, broadband Internet and TV segments as in 2007. Our main focus for investments will be increasing our capacity of providing broadband services, to bring Internet in every home & office. We will also focus on giving more consistency to the partnership with Cosmote and we will continue to add more value to our existent services. 3.The Romanian telecom market is probably one of the most competitive in Europe, making it a challenge for the development of any operator. The most important players on the market started to compete one another with as advantageous as possible offers for the clients. This is actually a good thing for the client, because he is the one who gains in the end. As long as there is fair competition on the market, as long as we compete equally, obeying the same rules, as long as investments are encouraged by regulation and the rights of customers are protected, competition is a good thing. Sursa: http://www.rompress.ro

Tags: romtelecom customer growth services clients greek cosmote investors romania romanian market business euro

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