July 29 (SeeNews) - Orange Romania, a unit of France Telecom's Internet and mobile arm Orange, said on Thursday its revenues increased by 6% on the year in the first half of 2021 to 532 million euro ($632 million) due to a rise in equipment sales.
In the second quarter alone, Orange Romania's revenues rose by an annual 11% to 268 million euro, Orange Romania said in a press release.
Orange Romania had 10.628 million customers at the end of June, up 4% on the year.
During the second quarter of 2021, some 29,000 inhabitants from 72 new localities in rural areas received access to 4G connectivity, while 317 new localities in urban and rural areas received access to the 4G + network. Orange's 4G network coverage reached 98.21% of the population at the end of June.
Also, Orange Romania has so far connected 20 cities to its 5G network.
Fixed broadband services had 432,000 customers at the end of June, up 17% on the year.
"The efficiency and perseverance from this first semester paid off and reconfirmed the upward trend we are on. We focused on services that have brought value to customers in the area of innovation, connectivity and research, offering high-performance solutions to all users, be they residential customers or companies," Orange Romania CEO Liudmila Climoc said.
"A major goal for us is to become the first choice in the convergent services market in Romania. A step forward in this strategy is represented by the conditional approval of the European Commission for the transaction by which Orange Romania is acquiring a majority stake of 54% of Telekom Romania Communications shares."
The Commission on Wednesday announced that it has conditionally approved the proposed acquisition of fixed-line operator Telekom Romania Communications (TKR) by Orange Romania. The approval is conditional on the divestiture of TKR's 30% minority shareholding in Telekom Romania Mobile Communications, which is a direct competitor of Orange.
Last year, Orange Romania's recorded revenues of 1.076 billion euro, compared with 1.112 billion euro in 2019.
Romania’s market of just over 19 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 20.8 billion euro in the first half of 2021, up 1.5% year-on-year.
($ =0.8422 euro)
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