British telecom group Vodafone gained 102,000 new mobile customers in Romania, in the third quarter of the 2014/2015 financial year, which ended on December 31, 2014. The group thus stopped a three-quarter decline in which it lost some 400,000 mobile clients in Romania.

Vodafone Romania had 8.6 million customers at December 31, 2014, out of which 8.016 million were mobile clients. The number of customers includes mobile services users, fixed voice and Internet users and m2m (machine to machine).

“Our focus on mobile data adoption, smartphone penetration and on providing our users the best network experience resulted in a growth in our customer base, during the past quarter. Our extended 4G coverage also brought an increase in the number of 4G customers in the overall base, over the past quarter,” said Ravinder Takkar, President and CEO of Vodafone Romania.

Data usage in Romania increased by 76.6% for the quarter ended December 31, 2014, compared to the same period of last year, to almost 5,000 terabytes (TB).

The increase in data usage was supported by higher smartphone sales. Vodafone sold 41% more smartphones compared to the same period of last year and by 29% versus the previous quarter. The 4G smartphones sales increased by 79%.

Voice and messaging usage also increased. Vodafone’s clients in Romania talked 5.9 billion minutes, 12% more than in the same quarter of the previous year, and sent almost 1.4 million messages, 21% more year-on-year.

Service revenue in the quarter decreased by 5.8% on an organic basis, to EUR 166.9 million, following a 69% decrease in mobile termination rates, which was effective from April 1, 2014. Excluding the impact of mobile termination rates decrease, Vodafone Romania’s service revenue grew by 8.8%, as compared to the same period of last year, on an organic basis, the company said.

In the first half of the fiscal year (April 1 – September 30, 2014), Vodafone’s revenue in Romania was EUR 346 million, down by 9% compared to the same period of the previous year. The company’s EBITDA declined by 11%, to EUR 122 million, and the adjusted operating result was down by 21%, to EUR 51 million, according to Vodafone’s quarterly report.

Vodafone is the second largest mobile carrier in Romania by number of customers. Its main competitors are Orange and Deutsche Telekom.

Andrei Chirileasa, andrei@romania-insider.com