New competitive products expected as Albtelecom, Eagle Mobile merge

TIRANA, June 25 – Turkish-owned ALBtelecom and Eagle Mobile’s merging plans will increase the portfolio of products both fixed line and mobile phone companies offer to Albanian customer. Orkunt Yozgat, the marketing and sales director of ALBtelecom and Eagle Mobile Albanian Screen TV in an interview says the challenge is not easy.
“The trend we are bringing, I think, is something very new even in Europe. Everybody wants to do it, but I think, it is not an easy thing to do, because you have to unify the entire infrastructure, all the networks and the billing systems. Everything must be unified. It must come like one.”
Orkunt Yozgat, who is also the company’s deputy director says the unified infrastructure will increase customer satisfaction.
“We are also trying to be one even with regard to our shops. Now we have different shops for Eagle and different shops for ALBtelecom. We will unify them as well, and we will have one standard shop. We will have one Customer Care, one Call Center, one Marketing, and one Sales Department. So, we will have one company and when we do it, when we converge all the services, the customers will be very happy. Maybe they will have only one invoice coming from our company, showing all the products they need. I think, it is a very important challenge for Albania and even for us.”
Bringing fixed and mobile phone users together will be the challenge of the Turkish-owned companies.
“When we are talking about this merge, of course, for the company it is very important, because on one side, we are reaching some mobile customers, and on the other side we are reaching some fixed customers, but the fixed customers are not always our mobile customers and the vice versa, our mobile customers are not always our fixed customers. So, as a strategy of our company, first of all we want to bring all these fixed and mobile customers together and increase even this number. So, if one customer is an Eagle customer but not an ALBtelecom customer, first thing we want to do is bring him to ALBtelecom as well, and the vice versa. Then, certainly, we want to offer the customer the whole package of services, so that the customer does not need to search another operator and in this way we can keep the customer in our company, because in the telecom industry, the most difficult and challenging thing is keeping the customer,” said Orkunt Yozgat
Orhan Coskun, the General Director of ALBtelecom and Eagle Mobile has earlier stressed that the merge of the two companies focuses on the customer. “We want to offer all kinds of services to the customer through one sole structure. We are merging the companies in order to provide better services to the customer”, said Coskun.
Speaking of the benefits of the merge in terms of expenditure costs Coskun said “The market is getting more and more demanding and we would like to offer better and better prices to customers. You might be experiencing that prices are going more and more down. So, how can the companies survive and grow? They need to reduce their operation expenditure to give better prices and services. I reduce the expenditure so I can offer better prices to the customer.”
Data show Turkish owned Eagle Mobile, which has been operating in Albania for four years, maintained its 12 percent market share for revenues for 2011 and had its subscribers increase by 3 percent to 21 percent. Fixed-line ALBtelecom is a leader in the market also offering internet service.