Croatian Unit of Austria's Mobilkom 9-mo EBITDA Falls 3.1% to 164.9 Mln Euro

"The reason for that [fall in EBITDA] is lower revenue after the expiration of the national roaming contract and lower revenue from guests in the VIP network," the company said in a statement.

Vipnet's total revenue rose by 2.6% to 402.5 million euro over the same period, the statement added.

Vipnet had 2.4 million subscribers at the end of September, up 14.2% from a year earlier. The company had a market share of 42.3% through September, almost one percentage point lower from the same period of 2007. At the same time the mobile penetration rate in the Adriatic country increased to 127.1% from 108.9%.

Besides Vipnet, the wireless operations of Telekom Austria group (www.telecom.at) include Belarussian Velcom, Mobilkom Austria, Bulgarian Mobiltel, Slovenia's Si.mobil, Serbia's Vip mobile and Macedonia's Vip.

Vipnet's main competitors on the wireless phone market in Croatia are T-Mobile, a unit of Deutsche Telekom's Croatian arm T-HT, and Tele2, owned by the Swedish operator of the same name. Vipnet also holds a licence for a fixed-line operator.

($ = 0.7847 euro)