Orange Romania, the biggest local telecom operator, reported a turnover of EUR 246.2 million for the January – March period of this year, up 4.6% compared to the similar period of 2016. With these figures, the company is keeping up the growth trend of the past 8 quarters.

The growth came from mobile services, the sales of mobile devices and the evolution of convergent services. At the end of Q1 of this year, Orange Romania had 10.065 million clients for its mobile and fixed services.

“The increasing need for internet connection was re-confirmed by the mobile traffic, which doubled during this period, as well as by the 4G traffic, which went up four times in Q1 2017 compared to Q1 2016,” the company said.

At the end of March 2017, Orange Romania had 2.4 million clients for its 4G services, double compared to Q1 of 2016. Increasing sales of smartphones and smartphone connected devices, such as smart watches, fitness bracelets, VR glasses, Apple Airpods and personal assistant-equipped headphones, supported this growth.

For its cable and satellite TV service, Orange Home TV, the company had 342,000 clients in Q1 of this year, up 16.4% compared to Q1 2016. For the same period, the company had 112,000 subscribers for the fixed broadband services. The number of optic fiber internet users doubled compared to the previous quarter, to exceed 12,000.

The number of downloads and updates for the company’s Orange TV Go app reached 2.2 million at the end of Q1 2017, up 25% compared to the similar period of 2016. The average monthly number of active users of the up in Q1 2017 went up by over 75% compared to Q1 2016, driven by the rich available content and its upgrade.

In between November 2016, when the company’s money transfer and phone payment service was launched, and until the end of March of this year, 41,000 clients used Orange Money for transfers, to pay bills or make PrePay recharges.

“The sustained performance of this quarter is based on the lines of the Essentials2020 strategy. The growth vectors we focused on during these three months were the network, the development of fixed services and entering the financial services area,” said Liudmila Climoc, Chief Executive Officer Orange Romania.

Orange is the biggest local telecom operator in terms of revenues and number of clients. Its main competitors are Vodafone, Telekom Romania, and RCS&RDS.

Orange Romania’s 4G network covers 81% of the country’s population

editor@romania-insider.com