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    HomeInsightsStable Mobilkom home performance contrasts with strong Balkan competition

    Stable Mobilkom home performance contrasts with strong Balkan competition

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    Telekom Austria’s wireless division grew revenues to EUR 498.5 million during the second quarter of 2002, a rise of 9.6% on the previous year’s equivalent quarter.

    The good second quarter performance meant that half year revenues were up 7.3% overall at EUR 973.2 million. These revenue figures were achieved against a background of the regulator cutting termination rates  from April 2003 by 1.24%. From September that rate cut will be imposed at 3.47%. Overall operating income rose by 2.5% to EUR 83.6 million.
    Of the carrier’s mobile businesses, Mobilkom Austria managed to increase its subscriber base by 6% in the quarter, taking its overall number to 3.1million. Those figures give it a market share of 43.5%, a slight rise on a year ago.
    However, there was a 19% rise in both subscriber acquisition and retention costs, which the operator attributed chiefly to the effects of higher handset subsidies.
    There was a small rise in the proportion of revenue by data, increased SMS use attributing to data reaching 10.8% of revenues from 9.3%.
    Telekom Austria’s Croatian subsidiary VIPnet added a further 400,000 subscribers during the quarter to take its total to 1.15 million. As ARPU fell by 5.0% to EUR 19.2, overall operating profit remained static at EUR 15.6 million, the operator reported.
    Slovenian operator Si.mobil lost subscribers during the quarter, falling from 351,500 at the end of March 2003 to 350,100. The slight drop was attributed to churn and increased competition. The operator complained that the Slovenian market continued to be plagued by “a great degree of regulatory inconsistencies” and pinned its future hopes on EU membership.