These are interesting times for RCS&RDS, the leading pay-TV provider in Romania.
It’s now the best part of a year since I last contemplated the future of this secretive and yet very important company. During that time, it has undoubtedly made significant progress on a number of fronts.
Having at one stage had interests in several CEE countries, its focus is now very much on just two: Hungary and its home market.
The company’s commitment to the former has only this week been demonstrated by the news that it is one of four bidders for broadband frequency licences being auctioned by the regulator NMHH. Whether it wins them or not, RCS&RDS is already firmly established in the country as a strong competitor to Magyar Telekom and UPC in the provision of pay-TV, broadband and telephony services.
On the other hand, it has also recently been reported that RCS&RDS is close to agreeing a sale of its assets in the Czech Republic to a company named Lama Group. This would follow on from its exit from Croatia and Slovakia, both of which took place last year, and mark yet another important milestone in its retrenchment.
On the innovation front, RCS&RDS launched an online entertainment platform named Digi TV Online in December last year and a personal data storage service in the cloud this April. Just as importantly, it introduced C+ conditional access modules in both Romania and Hungary at the end of 2013.
In terms of content, it signed several key programming deals, including ones with Viacom and SPT, but at the same time found itself in dispute with Eurosport, which decided to replace the international versions of its channels with a new one named Eurosport Romania, to be shown in the four markets RCS&RDS was present in.
There is no doubt that RCS&RDS is now finding itself under increasing pressure in its home market, especially from Cosmote Romtelecom and UPC, its main competitors.
The latest news coming out of Romania is that the company now finds itself in the position of having to defend its client base through such actions as increasing broadband speeds for no additional fee.
All this points to the next year being just as – if not more –eventful for RCS&RDS as the last one has been.
