Telekom Romania

Telekom Romania (formerly known as Romtelecom and Cosmote România) is a Romanian telecommunications company headquartered in Bucharest. It is the result of the brand merger between Romtelecom and Cosmote România. Although it is a subsidiary of OTE, a Greek telecommunications company, the company shares the branding of Deutsche Telekom, OTE's controlling shareholder.

Telekom Romania offers fixed telephony, mobile telephony, broadband internet, IPTV and IT services.

History

Fixed communications

The Telephone Palace (Palatul Telefoanelor) on Victory Avenue

In 1930, Societatea Anonimă Română de Telefoane (SART, "Romanian Telephone Company, Ltd.") was founded, more than 90% of its value being a foreign investment from ITT.

During this period (1930–1933), SART commissioned Palatul Telefoanelor (The Telephone Palace), a historic building in Bucharest. Although the building has suffered from several earthquakes and a bombardment, it is still standing, and has recently undergone a process of reconstruction and reconsolidation.

In 1949, SART was nationalised and turned into a division of the Ministry of Posts and Telecommunications. The slow pace of technological development that ensued was in accordance with a more general trend in the country during the Communist period, which lasted until 1989.

In December 1989, ROM-POST-TELECOM was created as a post and telecommunications operator, independent of the Ministry. The company adopted the name of Romtelecom after a reorganization in July 1991, when the state-owned company was also given the monopoly for basic telecommunications services.

In 1997, a 35% of the company's shares were sold to the Greek telecommunications company OTE. A corruption case arose around details of this privatisation, but eventually no measures were taken.

OTE has since acquired an additional 18% of the shares and has thus become the majority shareholder of the company.

Mobile communications

The company launched on the Romanian mobile telephony market in 1998 as Cosmorom. In the first years, the company failed to gain market share. Having less around 1% market share and financial losses, there were talks about the selling of the company, but the decision was delayed several times due to disagreement between OTE, the majority owner of Romtelecom and the Romanian Government.[1] In January 2004, Romtelecom decided to sell a majority stake in the company. Two of the purchase offers received were from Mobikom (now A1 Telekom Austria) and Deutsche Telekom's Matev from Hungary.[2]

In July 2005, OTE's mobile division Cosmote decided to buy 70% of shares in Cosmorom from Romtelecom, and on 6 December 2005, it was rebranded as Cosmote România (known locally as simply Cosmote).[3] By the end of 2005, Cosmote had approximately 50,000 subscribers, while Orange and Vodafone each had 6 million subscribers. On 2 March 2006, the company started a strong sales campaign on the prepaid market, which led to sharp subscriber rise to 1.23 million subscribers by the end of the year, and finally reaching a peak of 6.92 million subscribers by 2009.

On 30 June 2009, Cosmote acquired Zapp Mobile, a CDMA mobile operator with 374,000 subscribers, which also had a 3G license.[4] Following Zapp acquisition, Cosmote launched its 3G service.

Telekom Romania: unified services

On 12 September 2014, Romtelecom and Cosmote România unified its mobile and fixed services under the Deutsche Telekom branding and changed their respective legal names to Telekom Romania Communications S.A. and Telekom Romania Mobile Communications S.A. respectively.[5]

Recent history

Due to fall in subscriber numbers, the company has tried to attract customers with various offers, including by bundling mobile and fixed services, but its market share has continued to drop. The company raised prices, but financial losses continued.[6]

Acquisition by Orange

Telekom Romania was purchased by French telecommunications company Orange S.A. in August 2020, after the latter reached an agreement with the Ministry of Communications and Information Society (Romania) to establish a new telecommunications entity. As part of this agreement, Orange has taken over fixed operations and the Romanian government will own a 20% stake in the new entity.[7] The MCIS began negotiating with Orange to sell Telekom Romania in September 2019, after Orange finalized talks to purchase OTE's shares in the company.[8]

Shareholders

Telekom Romania Communications S.A. (fixed services):[9]

Telekom Romania Mobile Communications S.A. (mobile services):[9]

  • OTE - 69.9998630%
  • Telekom Romania Communications S.A. - 30.0001364%
  • Natural persons - 0.0000006%

Results

Mobile (pre-2014)

Result 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019
Market share 0.5% 7% 11% 23% over 23% 24% 24% 23.8% 22.9% - - - - - -
Customers (milion) 0.048 1.23 3.6 5.9 6.92 6.9 6.5 6.368 6.153 6.047 5.922 5.722 5.258 5.360 4.916
Revenues 8.0 43.8 155.6 311 423.2 468.8 468.2 462.8 457.6 - - - - - -

Radio frequency summary

The following is a list of known frequencies which Telekom employs in Romania:

Frequencies used on the Telekom Romania Network
MCC MNC Frequency Band Number Protocol (Downlink/Uplink speed) Class Notes
226 03 900 MHz 8 GSM/GPRS/EDGE 2G
226 03 1800 MHz 3 GSM/GPRS/EDGE 2G
226 06 900 MHz 8 UMTS/HSPA/HSPA+ (21.6 Mbit/s/5.76 Mbit/s) 3G
226 06 2100 MHz 1 UMTS/HSPA/HSPA+/DC-HSPA+ (43.2 Mbit/s/5.76 Mbit/s) 3G
226 03 800 MHz 20 LTE (37.5 Mbit/s) 4G
226 03 900 MHz 8 LTE (37.5 Mbit/s) 4G
226 03 1800 MHz 3 LTE (150 Mbit/s/50 Mbit/s) 4G

References

  1. ^ "Destinul Cosmorom ramane o mare necunoscuta". capital.ro. 11 December 2003.
  2. ^ "Trei oferte pentru cumpararea Cosmorom". capital.ro. 29 January 2004.
  3. ^ ""CosmOTE" a transferat banii pentru "Cosmorom"". bursa.ro. 11 July 2020.
  4. ^ "UPDATE: Cosmote cumpara Zapp in Romania, pentru circa 207 milioane euro". hotnews.ro. 30 June 2009.
  5. ^ "COSMOTE şi ROMTELECOM devin un singur brand, TELEKOM". evz.ro. 14 August 2014.
  6. ^ "Telekom Romania To Increase The Price For All Fix And Mobile Services". romaniajournal.ro. 6 March 2019.
  7. ^ "Orange reaches agreement to take over Deutsche Telekom's fixed operations in Romania". Romania Insider. Retrieved 2020-08-29.
  8. ^ "Orange poised to acquire Telekom Romania stake from OTE". www.capacitymedia.com. Retrieved 2020-08-29.
  9. ^ a b "Actionari (Shareholders)" (in Romanian). Telekom Romania. Retrieved 2018-01-16.

External links