Orange Group will soon begin building its own fibre-optic network in Romania as it is unhappy with the rising cost of accessing Telecom Romania’s fixed network, reports local paper Ziarul Financiar citing Orange Group’s deputy general manager and COO for Europe, Ramon Fernandez. The executive explained that growth in fixed line service subscribers had led to higher rental costs and contributed to the erosion of the group’s profit margin in the first six months of the year. Developing its own fibre-optic network in Romania would therefore lower the group’s costs, Fernandez explained.
The two firms entered a network access agreement in 2016. However, Telekom stopped using Orange’s 4G network in the first half of 2019 following criticism of the charges applied by the French-owned group. Telekom has instead chosen to invest in its own mobile network in recent years.