Orange challenges fixed Internet market

Orange, the number one mobile telephony provider on the domestic market, has cut its rates and boosted the traffic limit for mobile Internet offers in an attempt to rival the customer base of companies like RCS&RDS, UPC and Romtelecom with lower prices, as well as mobility. With the mobile telephony market reaching maturity and revenues from voice services no longer having room for growth, data services are becoming the main battleground for operators. “With these offers we are trying to expand the number and type of clients for data services. One of our targets is the users of fixed Internet access solutions,” Ciprian Raghean, head of Orange’s Business division told ZF. The operator has cut the price of the mobile Internet access plans to 10 euros a month, once it introduced the Internet Unlimited Start plan, which includes a monthly traffic of 1.5 GB of data and Internet access at speeds of up to 3.6 Mbps. Orange is also experiencing significant competition from Vodafone, which launched a mobile web access plan in mid February. Vodafone is due to announce new changes in its mobile data services offer today.