Connex heading for 3.3 million customers

Mobile telephony operator MobiFon, owner of the Connex brand, yesterday celebrated the addition of the third millionth customer, with the company officials confident it would gain two or three hundred thousand more clients by yearend.

“We expect the number of clients to go up by 200-300,000 by yearend, partly because of the winter holiday season,” Michael Fowley, marketing vice-president said. Fowley added the turnover was also expected to make significant progress, without providing any details in this regard. “We usually do not like to make estimates, as some of our competitors do,” said Ted Lattimore, MobiFon’s chief operating officer. He specified that out of the three million clients, two thirds were prepaid card users and only one million preferred post-paid subscriptions.

MobiFon announced its total investments in Romania would reach one billion dollars by next year, which is the largest greenfield investment after 1989. The telecom market deregulation on January 1, 2003, has benefited Connex. Investments in Internet communications systems have exceeded $3 million this year, and the revenues derived from the telecom operations as a result of the market deregulation have come to total $51 million.

The revenues of the mobile telephony operator at the end of the first half this year reached $240.2 million, 21% more than in the same time in 2002. “The development of Romania’s communications infrastructure is capital for attracting new investments. We believe we will remain a growth factor for Romania’s rebirth process,” Ted Lattimore said.

MobiFon’s archrival on the Romanian market is Orange Romania, which logged 206 million euro revenues and about 2.6 million clients at the end of H1. MobiFon’s main shareholders are Telesystem International Wireless (TIW) – Canada, and Vodafone – UK.
dan.dragomir@zf.ro