The investment budget allocated to the mobile network stands at tens of millions of euros a year, he said without specifying exactly how high it was and the first step is building 4G mobile data network in 25 cities.
“It’s an ambitious plan, we want to deploy more than 400 4G base stations in the 25 cities in just a few months,” Popoviciu said, adding the operator wanted to expand aggressively the list of cities where it will increase the mobile data speed by expanding the 4G network next year. The contract for services and equipment, one of the biggest on the market, does not have a winner yet, the RCS official added.
“Next year we want to continue with the 4G expansion in the other cities, depending on size, traffic and other indicators. This year we will go with one of the Chinese suppliers, but we cannot say which yet, because we are still in talks. We will also use the technology already implemented by 2K, we will take what works and redesign it, we will probably choose one of the Chinese suppliers but we are open to other suppliers for our 4G network.”
Why is RCS&RDS in such a hurry? The acquisition of the 4G license helps the company address one of its pressing issues: the absence of a high-speed mobile Internet service when this is becoming the deciding factor people consider when choosing a mobile communications provider. With the frequency spectrum it had so far, RCS has been unable to keep up with the leaders of the local mobile telephony market Orange and Vodafone.
“To us, 4G is important also because of the online content we want to promote to our users. 3G helps, too, but 4G comes with this additional capacity layer that will be gradually used as customers get suitable terminals and helps us take our video content services further (…). Online video service adoption rate is still low but is growing,” Popoviciu said.
(English version by Loredana Fratila-Cristescu)