Orange: Room for growth on the telecom market

However, Moat admitted that market growth will not be “as spectacular as it has been until now, but there is still room for growth.”

Corporate clients and wireless technology are the main development fields for Orange Romania this year. The company will invest some €200 million in 2007, mainly to expand its 3G network in all county capitals.
 Orange Romania currently has 400,000 G3 and EDGE (Enhanced Data for GSM Evolution, a technology providing faster download and browsing speeds) subscribers.

Part of the investment will be used to develop the WiMax wireless technology, which allows service providers to cover large areas at high data transfer speeds, in several areas of the country. WiMax is targeting mainly corporate clients.
“It is obvious that the Romanian business sector is developing significantly and that the need of companies will grow proportionally. All companies do not have access to this type of data, so there is a major opportunity to enter virgin territory. This is a valuable strategy,” Moat said. 

Orange also plans to start providing HSDPA (High-Speed Downlink Packet Access) services, which allow high speed mobile Internet access.

Orange has already developed HSDPA services in France, Britain, Spain and Slovakia. By the end of the year, the mobile phone operator also plans to double the number of Orange Shops in Romania to 85 from the 42 it had at the end of 2006.
At the end of 2006, Orange posted revenues worth €1.082 billion, a 24.4 percent year-on-year increase.

Orange Romania is the local market leader, with 8.271 million clients. Its main competitor is Vodafone, which posted revenues in excess of €1 billion and more than 7.7 million clients. Cosmote ranks third, with some two million clients. Romanians spent some $2.1 billion on telecommunications last year (about €1.5 billion), more than Bulgarians, who spent $840,000. Hungarians spent more than Romanians - some $2.5 billion, according to U.S.-based International Data Corporation (IDC).