Orange Romania reported turnover up 11.1 percent year-on-year in Q1 to EUR 270 million, according Telecompaper. Growth was mainly driven by positive developments in mobile data usage, mobile device sales and multi-play services. On 31 March, Orange Romania offered mobile, fixed and TV services to 10.449 million customers. At the end of March, more than 3.3 million Orange customers used Orange 4G/LTE services, nearly 40 percent more than in the first quarter of 2017, with the LTE network covering 93.4 percent of the country's population.
The same upward trend is also evident in mobile data traffic, which grew by 85 percent compared to Q1 2017. LTE traffic alone grew 3-fold from Q1 2017, an evolution supported by smartphone sales and continuous investment in LTE and 4G +/LTE-A networks.
Performance smartphones and connected devices stay at the top of customers' preferences. For example, sales in the connected device category grew by 70 percent in Q1 compared to the first quarter of 2017. Increased interest was also seen in connected devices for homes whose sales increased 5 times compared to the first quarter of the previous year.
At the end of March, the Orange Home TV service had 418,000 customers, up 22 percent compared to Q1 2017, and fixed broadband services had over 210,000 subscribers, up 65 percent. In the first quarter, 95,000 customers chose the fixed-mobile services from Orange, nearly 6 times more than in the previous year. Also, the interest of users to access video content on any device is reflected in the average monthly number of active users of Orange TV Go, which increased by 27 percent in Q1 2018 compared to the same period in 2017. The increase was recorded as a result of content enrichment and diversification and the customisation of the application based on customer feedback.
The mobile transactions segment also saw an increase due to the accessibility and speed of transactions. The number of customers who chose Orange Money until 31 March to pay bills and recharge prepay accounts reached 94,000, that's up 130 percent over the same period last year.
