Orange Romania’s revenues decline by 2.7%, but client base increases

Orange Romania, the country’s largest mobile carrier, reduced its revenues by 2.7% last year, to EUR 909 million. The drop was mainly due to the local regulator’s decision to cut termination fees, starting April 2014. The like-for-like revenues, excluding this effect, increased by 4.2% last year, according to Orange Romania’s representatives. Orange reached 10.53 million customers at the end of 2014, an increase of 95,000 compared to the end of 2013. “In 2014 it became more obvious that the digitalization is part of Romanians’ lives. This is the direction in which we invested in recent years, ensuring a performing and stable network that can also support the new trends in consumption, such as high-speed internet and innovative and accessible content services, along the traditional services,” said Jean-Francois Fallacher, CEO of Orange Romania. The mobile data consumption maintained its growth trend in 2014 and registered an 85% increase in the fourth quarter of 2014 compared to the same period of 2013. To support this, Orange continued to invest in expanding its 3G, 4G and 4G+ networks. At the end of the year, the company’s 4G coverage reached 89% of the urban population and 62% of the total population, according to Orange. Sales of 4G smartphones and tablets also increased fourfold in the fourth quarter compared to the same period of 2013, while 4G data traffic generated by Orange customers went up by 87%. The Orange TV service reached more than 157,000 subscribers at the end of 2014 while the Orange TV Go app, which offers TV content for smartphones and tablets, hit 1.1 million downloads. “The Orange TV service had a significant increase, which shows that Romanians started to watch TV differently,” said Fallacher. He added that Orange will continue to invest in 4G services in 2015. Andrei Chirileasa, andrei@romania-insider.com