October 29 (SeeNews) - Orange Romania, a unit of France Telecom's Internet and mobile arm Orange, said on Tuesday its revenues fell by 2.8% on the year in the third quarter to 279 million euro ($309.5 million), mainly due to a drop in demand for equipment.
Orange Romania had 10.928 million customers at the end of September, up 0.3% on the year, Orange Romania said in an interim financial report.
Mobile Internet traffic surged by 34% year-on-year in the third quarter of 2019, supported by an increase in smartphone sales and investment in 4G and 4G+ networks.
TV services had 532,700 customers at the end of September, a 12% increase year on year. Fixed broadband services had 332,900 customers at the end of the third quarter, up 28% on the year.
"The local market is now resetting as a result of the changes in the fiscal environment and telecommunications regulations which happened at the beginning of this year. At the same time, there are two obvious trends: a more moderate demand for equipment and increased appetite for digital services," Orange Romania CEO Liudmila Climoc said.
Orange Romania's revenues increased by 5% last year relative to 2017, reaching 1.125 billion euro on the back of growth of fixed-mobile services and higher mobile data consumption.
Romania’s market of just over 20 million people is served by five mobile operators - Orange Romania; Telekom Romania, former Cosmote Romania; RCS&RDS; Vodafone Romania; and insolvent 2K Telecom.
At group level, Orange posted revenues of 10.57 billion euro in the third quarter of 2019, compared to 10.48 billion euro last year.
($ = 0.9013 euro)
Orange Romania SA is among the biggest companies in SEE. You can download our SEE Top 100 ranking
here or subscribe to our free Top 100 newsletter
here