The Bulgarian Communications Regulation Commission (CRC), takes up a new schedule to lower the fees levied by the mobile operators by 45% by July’10. Bulgarian mobile phone users pay an average of 0.19-0.25 leva a minute when calling from mobile to mobile and 0.29-0.32 leva a minute when calling from landlines to mobile, the highest charged in European Union.
The mobile operators will have to lower their prices five times, on January 1 2009, July 1 2009, September 1 2009, January 1 2010 and July 1 2010, everytime by 7-9% and by the last cut the prices will fall down to 0.13-0.15 leva a minute regarding whether they call from a landline or a mobile.
CRC will also reportedly ask fixed-line telecoms to cut down the bulk mobile call termination rates, the fees paid by consumers when calling landlines from mobile numbers.
Bulgaria’s three telecom firms, Austria Telekom’s Mobiltel, Cosmote unit Globul and BTC, the dominant fixed-line operator that recently integrated its mobile subsidiary Vivatel, will be required by law to obey the ruling, but can appeal the decision in court.
The ruling will allow Mobiltel and Globul to maintain their dominant position in the Bulgarian mobile market, though they still are against the ruling. BTC, however, according to a localmedia report, was not happy with the decision, because it “did not change the current market situation,” .
Wireless Federation » archive for 'Globul'
CRC to adopt lowered fees schedule by July’10 (Bulgaria)
- December 22nd, 2008
- 5:59 am
Bulgaria rescinds mobile licence tender again
- December 9th, 2008
- 10:42 am
Bulgaria’s telecom regulator reportedly has cancelled the tender for two mobile operator licences after receiving no bids by the 27 November deadline. Three companies had bought tender paperwork by 24 November, including mobile operator Globul and two companies with no operations in the telecommunications sector, but no bids were placed by them. This was the second attempt made by the regulator to offer idle frequencies.
Mobitel recieves a new dialling code and two million phone numbers (Bulgaria)
- October 8th, 2008
- 7:11 am
Bulgaria’s Communications Regulation Commission (CRC) grants Mobitel, after ten months of it’s request, new dialling code and two million new phone numbers. Now Mobitel, which operates on 88 dialling code will also be using 98 code. The all new 2 million mobile numbers will have the 988 and 989 prefixes.
Mobitel had requested the regulator for a vancant code in 2007, but was rejected as the operator then was using only 60% of the allocated numbers.
The operator argued that with five million subscribers, one million SIM cards on sale, another million for internal systems synchronisation and yet more used to provide data services, it was running low on resources.
M-Tel had taken the regulator to court for the rejection of the requst for additional numbers, which were needed as it was looking forward to launch new services with the new code.
According to telco, the resource will not be used for new SIM cards because the old capacity has not been depleted. The CRC will allocate two million numbers for Mobiltel’s rivals, Globul and Vivatel, although neither has requested additional numbers.
Globul’s subscriber base grows to 3.95 million in Q2′08 (Bulgaria)
- August 29th, 2008
- 12:25 pm
Globul, the Bulgarian mobile operator, has maintained it’s shares in the Bulgarian mobile market with firm revenue growth in Q2′08.
The service revenue for Globul rose by 11.3%, based on 17.5% rise in contract revenues and 95% increse in data revenues following the introduction of 3G services.
The mobile operator reported a strong OIBDA margin improvement in the Q2 despite strong growth in the contract subscriber base. Key factors contributing to this improvement have been network expenses and marketing.
Globul’s key focus remains on the post-paid subscriber segment, adding 112, 000 net new contract subscribers, to bring its contract subscriber base to 1.9 million, or 48% of the total, the firm said. As in previous quarters, pre-paid subscribers registered a decline of approximately 45 000, leading to an overall subscriber growth of 67 000 and a base of 3.95 million subscribers.
Globul’s blended AMOU for H1 was up by about 20%, reflecting a 41 per cent increase in pre-paid AMOU following commercial initiatives to stimulate usage and the subscriber base rationalization. Reflecting lower post-paid ARPU, resulting from the higher subscriber numbers in this category as well as tariff erosion, blended ARPU was down in the first half of 2008.
M-tel, Vivatel and Globul align their roaming call tariffs to the Eurotariff (Bulgaria)
- August 29th, 2008
- 11:46 am
Three Bulgarian mobile operators have revealed that they’ll align their roaming call tariffs to the Eurotariff, which came into being last year.
The directive states that the price ceiling for calls made will shall decrease to 0.46 euro and 0.43 euro, and for calls received to 0.22 euro and 0.19 euro, on 30 August 2008 and on 30 August 2009, respectively.
M-tel and Vivatel, will adjust their roaming tariffs at the last moment while Globul did the same in 2007.
The calling tariffs will now be become 1.08 lev a minute, for calls made and 0.56 leva a minute for the recieved.
Mobiltel and Vivatel said the tariff reduction will have no adverse effect on their financial performance.
Subscriber growth helps boost Cosmote profits by 24.6% (Greece,Romania,Bulgaria,Macedonia)
- August 29th, 2007
- 3:08 pm
Greek mobile group Cosmote reported a 24.6% year-on-year rise in net income in the second quarter, to EUR101.6 million (USD138.6 million), helped by strong subscriber growth, the effects of its takeover of the Germanos retail chain in Q4 2006 and forex gains. Revenues for the three months ended June 2007 climbed 36.6% to EUR738.4 million, and EBITDA improved by 22% percent to EUR248.4 million. Cosmote operates in five countries: Greece, Albania, Bulgaria, Macedonia (FYROM) and Romania, through its respective units Cosmote Greece, AMC, Globul, Cosmofon and Cosmote Romania respectively. Total net subscriber additions in Q2 2007 reached 870,000 to give it a total of 13.1 million customers at the end of June 2007, a 39.4% increase from a year ago and on track to exceed a target of 15 million in 2009. The retail network of Germanos was the driving force behind much of the growth, accounting for around 63% of total net subscriber additions (excluding Albania) in Q2 2007 compared to around 38% a year before. Romania had the highest number of new additions at over 350,000, whilst Cosmote Greece added over 250,000 customers. Cosmofon in FYROM added 18,000 new subscribers in the second quarter to end June with 515,785 users.
Cosmote reported 37.5% year-on-year consolidated revenue growth for the first half, and H1 profit growth of 12.5%. Overall, international revenues in H1 2007, accounted for approximately 31% of group revenues (excluding Germanos), within targets set by the firm in 2005 (30%-35%), despite domestic operations continuing strong revenue growth throughout the period and Romanian operations still being in an early development phase. Total group CAPEX reached approximately EUR219 million in H1 2007. Romania accounted for around EUR84 million of the investment as it continues investing heavily to expand its network capacity. Greece absorbed EUR65 million and Bulgaria a further 37 million. Group net debt stood at EUR2.5 billion at the end of June, following a dividend payment of EUR244 million at the end of the month.
