“The mobile telephony market remained relatively stable. 2014 saw all mobile operators move to unlimited or abundance offers,” the report reads. “The fixed-line broadband market – which has a low penetration rate – continued to grow. Pay TV also grew thanks to content and multi-screen offers.”
Orange’s total revenue fell by 2.7% to EUR909 million, while the customer base rose slightly to 10.5 million.
“In Romania, business growth was in line with the Group’s ambitions, despite a challenging economic climate marked by the crisis and an increasingly competitive environment.”
The report reveals two figures the company has not revealed in the past few years: the number of contract subscribers stood at 4.4 million at the end of last year, one million more than its main rival, Vodafone, had and the number of mobile data users reached 4.2 million at the end of 2014 compared with 3.5 million in late 2012.
The number of contract subscribers increased by 1%, the report says. “This upward movement was fostered by digitalization and 4G services.”
Orange’s market share by customer base reached 39.6% at the end of last year. Its estimates for the local trend of the mobile telephony market point to an increase of the cable TV company RCS&RDS to almost 8% of the segment.
Taking into account Orange’s estimates and the data of the telecommunications market watchdog ANCOM, RCS&RDS had about 2 million mobile telephony customers.
Given RCS&RDS’ offer structure, most of the Digi Mobil customers may very well be contract subscribers, which means the operator held by Oradea entrepreneur Zoltan Teszari might have left Telekom behind in this department.
However, the average revenue per user (ARPU) was significantly lower. Telekom had about 1.7 million mobile phone contract subscribers at the end of last year.
The report also reveals for the first time some information on the progress of the shared network agreement with Vodafone.
“Orange started to implement its shared network agreement with Vodafone, signed in 2013 for a term of 16 years. This led to better 2G and 3G coverage, while the fiber optic network in urban areas supported the development of 4G services. At end-2014, 25% of the network was operational according to schedule.”
The report also mentions the agreement Orange signed with Ericsson to outsource network maintenance and operation at a European level.
In 2015, Orange Romania will pursue a number of objectives, among which: preserving its market leader positioning, in terms of both volume and value; developing new sources of revenue, such as Orange Money, or TV programs via pay TV or the Internet and expanding the enterprise segment with a comprehensive communication solutions offer. (EUR1=RON4.4395)
(English version by Loredana Fratila-Cristescu)