ZAGREB (Croatia), November 4 (SeeNews) – Croatian fixed-line operator Optima Telekom said it pared its nine-month consolidated loss by 14.7% on the year to 78.3 million kuna ($15.8 million/10.78 million euro).
Group EBITDA (earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortisation) improved to 18.7 million kuna through September from a negative EBITDA of 13.4 million kuna a year earlier as a result of a new direction in the business strategy based on the development of the Local Loop Unbundling (LLU) process, Optima Telekom said in a statement posted on its website.
Consolidated group revenues rose 6.7% to 348 million kuna in the nine months to September while group costs increased to 426.4 million kuna from 419.8 million kuna a year earlier, the statement said.
The carrier's LLU customer base expanded by 50% on the year to 87,500 customers at the end of September while the number of users of the company's proprietary ADSL network jumped 86% on the year to 42,983 at the end of the review period.
The company said it deployed 24 kilometres of fiber-optic lines through September, extending the total length of its network by 24.1% on the year to 2,223 km.
Optima Telekom was awarded a 30-year concession to provide fixed-line services in 2004, becoming Croatia's second operator on this segment alongside incumbent T-HT.
T-HT, majority-owned by Deutsche Telekom, controlled 75.16% of Croatia's fixed-line segment in terms of subscribers at the end of June 2009 while its competitors controlled a combined 24.84%, data of the country's telecommunications regulator showed.
(1 euro=7.2636 Croatian kuna)