Marinescu, ANCOM: There is room for competition and a new 3G license

“There is clearly consolidation on the mobile phone market and operators now have all the necessary resources for providing comparable services, but there are other operators in Europe as well. I do not know what their policy is, but they could come to Romania too,” ANCOM’s President, Catalin Marinescu, told Business Standard.

Of the top four players in Europe, France Telecom and Vodafone are present on the local market through operators that own 3G licenses, Deutsche Telekom is to enter this segment following the acquisition of Zapp by Cosmote, and the only strong group that is missing is Telefonica.

The official said that the declines in revenues posted by operators are not large enough to jeopardize their profitability. “If you look at the profit margin, you will notice that the operators are up. So I do not think the situation is that grim. The evolution is probably weaker and somewhat uncertain for operators, but at present I do not think we can definitely say that operators are losing money. Not because of competition. For now, there are even more resources to enhance competition,” Marinescu said.