Romania is repeatedly used in the British press as an example of how poorly the UK’s telecom networks perform. The more useful question is why Romania has built stronger connectivity and what that says about the UK’s investment environment.
The UK telecom sector has faced pressure from falling prices, rising data usage and high infrastructure costs. Between 2020 and 2025, the real cost of mobile services for a typical user fell by 20%, while average data consumption more than doubled. That combination puts pressure on operators to maintain and expand networks while generating less revenue per unit of usage.
Romania followed a different path. Its broadband market expanded rapidly in the early 2000s, with hundreds of internet providers competing to offer affordable high-speed connections. Romania also had less of the extensive legacy telephone infrastructure found across Western Europe, making it easier for new operators to build modern networks rather than upgrading large existing copper systems.
Residents and small operators built shared connections between apartment blocks and neighbourhoods, creating a decentralised broadband infrastructure that could serve large numbers of households at relatively low cost.
By 2008, more than 1,800 local networks were operating across Romania, serving around 300,000 customers. Many were later absorbed into larger providers, helping create the dense fibre networks that support the market today. The result is a substantial fixed broadband infrastructure. By the end of 2023, three-quarters of Romania’s fixed internet connections were fibre-only.
Romanian spectrum licences require operators to cover at least 98% of the population using their own radio access networks. The country’s telecom regulator found in 2024 that all four operators exceeded that requirement, with voice coverage between 98.1% and 98.6%.
The UK faces a different cost structure. Operators have to deal with planning restrictions, challenges in deploying and upgrading sites, spectrum costs and the expense of removing Huawei equipment from their networks. These factors can increase the cost and complexity of network investment.
Cerillion plc (LON:CER) is a leading provider of billing, charging and customer management systems with more than 20 years’ experience delivering its solutions across a broad range of industries including the telecommunications, finance, utilities and transportation sectors.
