Liliana Solomon, Vodafone: No industry is immune to a global financial crisis

“The crisis has just started to take shape in Romania, after it had already affected countries in Western Europe. I think no industry is perfectly immune to a global crisis, and therefore, the impact will spread on the entire economy, including the telecom industry. Financial crisis will have a milder effect on the telecommunication market compared to the banking system”, said Liliana Solomon, Chief Executive Officer at Vodafone Romania.

In her opinion, there are a number of factors to impact the business environment, namely the recent restrictive credit regulations, which will dent the segment of small and medium sized companies, lending costs, which will lessen profits, together with volatility of leu/euro rate.
Regarding the number of users on data services, Liliana Solomon said the number of Internet users is expected to reach 9 million in Romania, while the number of Internet connections would increase up to around 7-7.5 million.

The number of Vodafone Romania mobile internet customers has tripled during this year.
“Data services follow a good development trend, and the number of users for broadband services and mobile internet rose threefold since the beginning of this year. It is a healthy growth and we believe the development trend will remain”, Liliana Solomon added.

Vodafone launched yesterday a new offer for internet and e-mail access on the mobile phone, addressing both consumers and SMEs.

“The new solutions will provide SMEs with Internet access directly from mobile-phone without a server, as it happens in large companies that use BlackBerry”, Liliana Solomon outlined. The company said it would launch BlackBerry Storm in December and Vodafone trademarked notebook computer by yearend.

Translated by Camelia Oancea