Cosmote Romania, the third biggest mobile telecommunication operator agrees with ANC’s decision to cut the interconnection charges and says the gap between other fees imposed to the two leading players is fair.

The competition will lead to interconnection fees cut

The “input” traffic to Cosmote Romania is much less than the network “output”, and the company’s CEO said the two major operators are thinking more about making profit instead of client’s best interests.

“The role of ANC is to secure the competitive environment and to protect the consumer’s interests. The way Orange and Vodafone take action proves the fact that they only think about casting high profit margins instead of thinking about the clients’ interests. Orange and Vodafone have each a double number of clients compared to Cosmote’s, and even with this gap between interconnection fees, they get more than they give to the other operators. The number of new clients is less than the clients who leave our network”, said Stefanos Theocharopoulos (photo), CEO of Cosmote Romania at a media briefing.

The decrease of interconnection charges will not lead to a fall of end price paid by consumer; the competition will.

“The decline of interconnection fees is not directly linked to the decline of tariffs charged by operators. The reduction of fees in the Romanian market was triggered by the fiercer competition. We have two operators that hold more than 80% of the market, which is abnormal compared to other countries in European Union. I haven’t seen any operator to report 46-47% EBITDA. These things don’t make any sense. The tighter competition will lead to a cut of fees and thus, the profit margins of operators will take the same trend,” said Costas Kapetanopoulos, marketing and communication manager of Cosmote Romania.

Orange: Cosmote is the only one to get advantage from ANC’s