RCS & RDS. Telekom, Vodafone Orange, in the end, they confirmed all the bad news that I heard from various quarters, and all the negative estimates that I made to you, including for the end of 2018, or the beginning of 2019. More precisely, I told you then because of GEO 114/2018, RCS & RDS, and the rest of the telecommunications operators, will increase the prices for services in Romania, and this happened little by little for each of the subsidiaries in Romania.
RCS & RDS. It all started in January 2019 when Digi announced the increase in subscription prices, and it took three months until Telekom to raise prices, Vodafone to make the subscriptions more expensiveand Orange to announce price increases. Among all the big mobile phone operators, those from Orange were the only ones who did not increase the prices for subscriptions already concluded, but only for new ones, RCS & RDS doing something similar at the beginning.
RCS & RDS. Telekom, Vodafone Orange, BAD NEWS AFFECTING ALL Romanians
RCS & RDS. Practically, all the big mobile phone operators have increased the price of their subscriptions because they lost the fight with the Romanian Government, which I told you since the end of 2018, but few people believed. What has not come true yet, from everything I have told you, has to do with the prices of the new subscriptions, RCS & RDS having the smallest increases, and Telekom, Orange, Vodafone, applied much lower increases than I expected, which which is a good thing.
RCS & RDS. If at Digi the prices increased by 1/2/3 LEI, at the rest of the operators the increases were between 2 and 4.5 LEI for customers, and the difference will help to pay the turnover tax, which is imposed this year for operators. What this increase will not cover is the higher price requested by the Romanian Government for the frequencies used for the 5G, RCS & RDS networks, plus the rest of the operators, going to compensate this with higher prices for this service.
RCS & RDS. I don't expect 5G services to be offered at reasonable prices in Romania right from the start, but this shouldn't be a surprise to anyone, so it's good to expect the worst.
