Orange Romania's revenues increased in the first quarter of this year by 29.1% to 283.3 million euros, while the number of recorded customers increased by 16.4% to 8.271 million, according to data provided by the mobile telephone operator yesterday.
The operator has significantly improved its growth rate on last year when it posted a 23% increase in turnover, of 239 million euros, at the end of the first quarter. The almost 30% growth in turnover comes amid a slowdown in the number of newly subscribed customers, in comparison with the same period last year.
Orange has added another 230,000 new customers since the end of last year. In the first quarter of 2006 it had announced a 34% increase in its customer base.
"We are very pleased with the acceleration of the growth rate in the number of post-paid customers and also with the significant development of network traffic compared with previous quarters," Orange Romania's chief executive Richard Moat stated in a press release. This year the company's goal was to continue to develop its broadband network, which includes the EDGE and 3G technologies; it is also soon expected to introduce HSDPA services, known as 3.5G, added Moat.
Orange did not report the number of customers using the mobile data transmission services based on EGDE and 3G technologies, but specified, "because of the competitive offers launched recently by Orange, the number of broadband customers (EDGE and 3G) has seen a significant increase."
In the first quarter of 2007, the operator witnessed fast growth rates in the number of subscribers in the countries of Senegal - 97.4%, Jordan - 79.6% and Egypt - 53.2%, according to a release issued by Orange's owner France Telecom.
Romania has been included in the category of markets indicating a significant growth potential for owners France Telecom, alongside Poland, Botswana, Cameroon, The Ivory Coast, the Dominican Republic, Egypt, Equatorial Guinea, Jordan, Madagascar, Mauritius, Mexico, Moldova, Vietnam, Senegal, Slovakia and Vietnam. Customers subscribed to the Orange brand totalled 106 million at the end of the quarter, 63% more than at the end of March 2006.
The number of Orange mobile telephone clients, excluding MVNO (Mobile Virtual Network Operators) increased by 15.1% compared with the first quarter of 2006, which in comparable terms reaches 100.103 million subscribers, that is an increase of 2.5 million from January-March 2007.
France Telecom, the main French global telecommunications group recorded revenues of 12.844 billion-euros in the first three months of this year, an increase of 1.8% on the period of January-March 2006.
Earnings before interests, taxes, depreciation and amortisation (EBITDA) reached 4.657 billion euros in the first three months, above the average estimates of analysts polled by Reuters - 4.594 billion euros.
Orange Romania is the biggest domestic mobile telephone operator, with a total of more than 8.04 million customers at the end of last year, followed by Vodafone Romania with more than 7.71 million users, Cosmote Romania with 1.23 million users and Telemobil (Zapp) with around 500,000 users.
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