CEO Cosmote Romania: Orange and Vodafone seek to cast high profit margins instead of paramount concern for clients

The competition will lead to interconnection fees cut

The “input” traffic to Cosmote Romania is much less than the network “output”, and the company’s CEO said the two major operators are thinking more about making profit instead of client’s best interests.

“The role of ANC is to secure the competitive environment and to protect the consumer’s interests. The way Orange and Vodafone take action proves the fact that they only think about casting high profit margins instead of thinking about the clients’ interests. Orange and Vodafone have each a double number of clients compared to Cosmote’s, and even with this gap between interconnection fees, they get more than they give to the other operators. The number of new clients is less than the clients who leave our network”, said Stefanos Theocharopoulos (photo), CEO of Cosmote Romania at a media briefing.

The decrease of interconnection charges will not lead to a fall of end price paid by consumer; the competition will.

“The decline of interconnection fees is not directly linked to the decline of tariffs charged by operators. The reduction of fees in the Romanian market was triggered by the fiercer competition. We have two operators that hold more than 80% of the market, which is abnormal compared to other countries in European Union. I haven’t seen any operator to report 46-47% EBITDA. These things don’t make any sense. The tighter competition will lead to a cut of fees and thus, the profit margins of operators will take the same trend,” said Costas Kapetanopoulos, marketing and communication manager of Cosmote Romania.

Orange: Cosmote is the only one to get advantage from ANC’s decision

Orange Romania said the mobile telecommunication operator Cosmote is the only one to get advantage from the interconnection fees cut and disagrees with the tariff difference imposed by ANC.

“Cosmote is the only one to get advantage from ANC’s decision and it is natural to defend it, as long as it keeps its interconnection fees at high level. Orange agrees with the reduction of its interconnection fees, but it is in the client’s best interest for the reduction to be made uniformly. If ANC will not drop the idea of bigger tariffs for Cosmote and Telemobil, we will subsidize their inefficiency – which breaches any competition principle”, said Dorin Odiatiu, interconnection manager at Orange Romania.

Vodafone: we are convinced that Cosmote wants to boost profit

Vodafone agrees with the interconnection fees decrease, but as in Orange Romania, it disputes the tariff gap.

“Vodafone Romania thinks there is a major confusion, deliberate or not, between what the best interests of the end client stands for and the interests of certain companies. As you can see, the tariffs for the mobile telecommunication services continue to fall, due to the free competition in the market, without being influenced by the interconnection fees. Vodafone did not dispute the 5.03 eurocents tariff imposed by ANC, but the discriminatory treatment towards certain operators”, said Vodafone Romania representatives.

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