Orange Romania's revenues down on decrease of interconnection tariffs

Telecom operator Orange Romania saw its revenues shrink to some EUR 448 million in the first half of this year, 2 percent down on the same period of 2011, according to its parent company France Telecom.

If the effect of the drop in interconnection tariffs was excluded, Orange's revenues would have slightly increased – by 0.3 percent. The second quarter of the year was better than the first, with revenues inching up 4 percent. Orange Romania, with 10 million customers, out of which 4 million are subscribers, added 83,000 users to its portfolio in the first six months of 2012. Over 3.5 million Orange customers were using the mobile data services, while the data traffic from smart phones and tablets tripled in the last 12 months. In February this year, the Romanian National Authority for Management and Regulation in Communications (ANCOM) said it would reduce by 30 percent the new maximum tariffs that telecom companies can charge for call termination on their individual networks, as well as the maximum interconnection tariffs starting March. The maximum tariff that the six mobile telephony operators identified as having significant market power – Cosmote, Orange, RCS&RDS, Romtelecom, Telemobil and Vodafone – were allowed to charge for the services of call termination on mobile telephone networks was of 4.05 eurocents per minute from the beginning of March. editor@romania-insider.com (photo source: Orange)