This is less than half the ratio that data services bring inn the revenues of France Telecom’s subsidiaries in Western Europe - about one fifth. According to the report of last year’s third quarter, the French group’s subsidiary in the United Kingdom made one quarter of its revenues from data services alone.
Orange Romania posted revenues worth €977 million in the first nine months of 2008, up eight percent year-on-year. Data services include SMS and MMS messages, mobile and broadband internet.
The local operator’s strategy for 2009 focuses on mobile data services for the business segment, to soften the effects of the decline in economic growth on the company’s revenues.
“Service offers, which lead to a sharp drop in retail tariffs, close to zero cents, and the subsidies applied to mobile phones will continue to lower the ARPU [average revenues per user], but we believe the increase in the degree of adopting Orange mobile internet services will compensate for this drop,” said the company’s Chief Executive Officer (CEO), Richard Moat, at the end of 2008.
Other players on the local telecom market include Vodafone, Cosmote, Zapp and RCS&RDS.
