The speed war: Vodafone fights back

The operator wants to expand the user base on the data segment, which offers most room for increasing revenues, but also the perspectives of a 3G offer war.

“The voice remains the killer sector, but the telecom ecosystem is developing. Thus, the need for broadband communication increased very rapidly in the past few years. There is real demand for the new speeds, and definitely, we do not launch something just to have an announcement to make. Users are increasingly hungrier for broadband,” Vodafone Romania’s Chief Executive Officer, Liliana Solomon, said.

The new mobile broadband services will include a €19 modem for two-year contracts, and the tariffs are similar to those for subscriptions with speeds of 7.2 Mbps. The packages are currently available for some corporate clients in Bucharest, and will be accessible to individual users at the end of September.

Telemobil, the company that operates the Zapp network in Romania, provides mobile internet services at speeds of up to 21.6 Mbps in Bucharest, three times higher than those existing so far on the market, through 3G.

Solomon indicated that Vodafone Romania has hundreds of thousands of mobile broadband clients. “The impact of the economic crisis is felt in all fields of activity. Everything meaning electronics, laptops, fell, in terms of sales, by 40-50 percent this year. The number of users is increasing, but not at the same rate as in 2008, which may have been the best year in the industry,” the CEO added.