Local mobile market amounts to EUR 2.4 bln, says France Telecom

Newsroom 10/05/2010 | 12:03

Total revenues registered last year on the local mobile telephony market fell by 14.2 percent to

EUR 2.4 billion, according to the annual report of France Telecom, the main shareholder of Orange Romania. In 2008, the total value of the mobile telephony market was EUR 2.8 billion.

In spite of this, the number of active SIM cards rose to 29.1 million, according to the findings in the report. Of these, 10.3 million represented post-pay clients, a level similar to 2008. The number of pre-pay cards increased from 17.5 million to 18.8 million last year. The rate of penetration of mobile telephony services in Romania went up to 135 percent in 2009, which represents a rise on the previous year when the figure was 129 percent. This indicates the growth in the number of SIM cards owned by post-pay clients. According to the report, the telecommunication market was greatly affected by the impact of the recession. Revenues from mobile telephony services slumped by 14 percent in 2009, in spite of the fact that the number of post-pay subscribers increased constantly. The internet market also saw strong growth due to the development of fiber optic networks, says the France Telecom report. Last year, Orange posted revenues of EUR 1,055 billion in Romania. In the first quarter of this year, the operator generated EUR 237 million, which represents a 10 percent decline on the same period of 2009. Orange had 10,809,000 clients in Romania on March 31. Its number of broadband clients hiked by 40 percent on Q1, 2009, to 2,641,000.