Orange Romania exceeds 7m-user mark

Mobile telephony operator Orange Romania has announced it exceeded the 7 million-client threshold, after having reached about 5 million subscribers in January 2005, the company”s officials announced. The Romanian mobile telephony market reached a 62% telephony service penetration rate at the end of last year, up from June 2005, when some 50% of Romanians had a mobile phone, according to the estimations of Orange officials. They added that the upward trend would also be maintained this year, with the mobile telephony penetration rate estimated to reach 76% at the end of 2006. “Now that we have exceeded the 7 million-customer threshold, we can say that one in three Romanians is an Orange subscriber,” one of the mobile telephony officials said. “Launching innovative products and the development of an increasingly larger product portfolio have contributed to the consolidation of Orange”s success on the Romanian market,” Richard Moat, Orange Romania chief executive explained. The company posted 617 million-euro turnover for the first nine months of 2005, and a total of 6.22 million customers. Full-year financial results will be announced on February 14. Orange”s main competitor on the domestic market, Connex-Vodafone, logged 6.1 million clients by December 31, 2005, with an increase of 600,000 registered in the fourth quarter alone. The service revenues of this operator progressed by 39% in the last three months of 2005, compared with the same time in 2004. ZF