Vodafone CEO wants to enhance network capabilities, more tablets and cheaper smartphones

Vodafone Romania has an investment budget of EUR 500 million for the next five years, to be invested for the most part into the company’s network capabilities, according to Inaki Berroeta, the new CEO of the company, who was appointed in this position in December last year.

 Other investment targets will be the company’s call-centers, customer relations and the network of stores.

 “Romanians probably have more telecom stores than any other country, he said.

 At the moment, Vodafone Romania has a total of 900 outlets, either self-branded or stores of its partners. Thus, more than 200 of these are Vodafone exclusive stores.

 The Vodafone manager said he visited the stores and met a good share of clients, mostly corporate ones.

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 “Next month I will go around Cluj, Timisoara, Brasov, Iasi, Craiova and Constanta,” he said.

 The Vodafone CEO also said there are plans to re-vamp Vodafone’s online channel. Berroeta mentioned social media as “a very strong channel” which also brings the opportunity to have a very direct relationship with the customers.”

 One of the priorities will be to have as many affordable smartphones as possible.

 Also, the offer of tablets in Vodafone stores will diversify. “I want to improve the offer of tablets, so in the next period you can expect a lot of devices coming up. By summer, there will be a pretty good portfolio of tablets out on the market,” said Berroeta.

 Romania is still behind other countries as far as mobile data usage is concerned, this is why there is still potential on this market compared to other countries.

 “We now have the fastest network in the country by far. The real data download speed is twice as fast than that of our closest competitor, according to measurements made by P3” said Berroeta

 The general headcount of the company will remain pretty much the same even though there will be some shifts in personnel across various sectors.

 “We are a very healthy business and we are among the top 5 companies in Romania in terms of profit,” he said.

 At the end of last year, Vodafone Romania had more than 9.80 million users, down 35,000 percent compared to the previous quarter of 2010, but up 141,000 clients compared to the same quarter of 2009.

 “In terms of value for money in telecom, Romanians are very privileged. This market is extremely price sensitive: this is better for the customer but more challenging for us. What matters is what kind of value you are able to bring for your customers: this includes price per minute and quality of communication. We need to ensure that as a package, we offer more than our competitors,” said Berroeta.

 He also added that the market is very much driven by the number of SIMS. “Penetration in Romania is 130 percent at the moment, but there are countries where it is 180 percent,” he said.
Otilia Haraga