October 11 (SeeNews) - Telecommunications company Telenor Bulgaria said on Tuesday that it plans to increase its 4G/LTE coverage by two percentage points to 78% by the end of the year.
The company will add 64 small towns to its 4G/LTE network, some of which have population under 2,000, Michael Foley, CEO of Telenor Bulgaria, told a news conference.
"For us this is a very important step to the integration of small towns, so they could develop and catch up with the rest of the country.[...] The need for speed will continue to grow so the networks have to continue to expand because future lifestyle is in mobile communications," Foley added.
For the first nine months of the year Telenor Bulgaria recorded a 160% growth in the number of its mobile internet users, as the number of 4G phones connected to the company's network increased by 60%.
Norwegian-based telecommunications group Telenor bought Bulgarian mobile operator Globul from Greece's OTE for 717 million euro ($796.6 million) in 2013. In November 2014, Globul was rebranded to Telenor Bulgaria.
On the local mobile segment, Telenor competes with Mtel, the local unit of Telekom Austria, Bulgarian telecommunications group BTC, which operates under the brand name Vivacom, as well as with 4G operator Max.
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