Radu Tudorache, 32, the head of the Romanian representative office of Internet giant Google and the man who had been in charge of the state's regulatory strategy for the leading telecom companies on the domestic market, has become the new head of the residential voice services segment, which is part of the Commercial Department of Romtelecom, the largest domestic operator.

Tudorache will leave Google, the most frequently used Internet search engine both in Romania and worldwide, to take a strategic position with Romtelecom. He will have to create new voice products and reposition the existing offers of Romtelecom so that the operator can cope on a market where competitors like RCS&RDS provide this service for free.

"The position is Director Voice Services, residential, with the commercial department and the main job is the development and management of products for telephony services for individual customers," Radu Tudorache told ZF. He will coordinate a team of 20 people.

Romtelecom makes the better part of its revenues from fixed telephony, despite efforts to develop its business on the Internet and TV segments. Out of its total 872 million-euro revenues last year, Romtelecom got 313 million euros from fixed telephony subscriptions and 207 million euros from calls made from fixed phone lines.

Google Romania's former top man brings with him a major edge: he played the leading role to devise Romania's policy to regulate the telecom heavyweights for five years (2002-2007), a position in which he had access to information and key research about the country's communications industry strategy.

Radu Tudorache is actually the man that, from his position as an official of a public authority, set the strategy that resulted in some rates being cut by Orange, Vodafone and Romtelecom, for which reason such a move (i.e. his recruitment by a telecom