“We will reach a smartphone penetration rate of more than 80% in two years, which will create huge demand for mobile data and digital content services on phones and tablets,” said Miroslav Majoros, chief executive officer of Telekom Romania, the largest fixed and mobile communications group in the country with more than EUR1 billion revenue a year.
To be able to cope with the surge in data consumption, Telekom plans to boost investment in its own 4G network so as to rely less on its partner Orange’s. Majoros says this is a more reasonable approach, paying to develop the group’s own infrastructure because profit is quite good in most of those areas where it plans to do it.
Telecommunications market watchdog ANCOM data show the number of high-speed (3G and 4G) mobile Internet connections reached 14 million in mid last year, up from 8.5 million in 2014. The number of 4G connections stood at 3.7 million in mid 2016, up from 1.3 million in 2015. ANCOM statistics also show average mobile data usage per user tripled in 2014-2016.
(English version by Loredana Fratila-Cristescu)