Telekom Austria eyed by Sistema
www.WirelessFederation.com/news: Sistema, Russian telecommunications holding company, is seeking to bid to acquire Telekom Austria. Vladimir Yevtushenkov, who is the main owner of Sistema would be prepared to pay much more than the current share price, which values Telekom Austria at EUR 4.5 billion.
27 percent of Telekom Austria is currently held by Austrian state holding company Oeiag. However, any legal permission to sell its share is denied by Oeiag as a result of which it is unable to be in talks to sell Telekom Austria shares.
Telekom Austria has mobile operations in Bulgaria, Croatia, Slovenia, Liechtenstein, Macedonia, Serbia and Belarus. Sistema which has operations in Russia, Ukraine, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Armenia and Belarus is among others owner of Russia-based mobile operator MTS.
T-Hrvatski Telekom’s profit and EBITDA drops (Croatia)
www.WirelessFederation.com/news: Revenues of HRK8.517 billion have been earned by Croatian incumbent telco T-Hrvatski Telekom (T-HT) in 2009, 3.1% down from HRK8.791 billion the previous year. With a year-on-year decrease of 6.8%, EBITDA after exceptional items reached HRK3.695 billion in the twelve-month period.
12.4% drop in the net profit has been recorded which closed at HRK2.023 billion. However, cellular customer base of the company saw 13.5% growth in post-paid users to nearly 920,000 in twelve months compared to a 3.2% increase in pre-paid SIMs.
According to Ivica Mudrinic, CEO of T-HT, the company’s strategy to protect margins and revenues has worked and the firm has delivered a resilient set of results that reflect the high-quality services and tight cost control to serve our customers even more effectively.
2.6m active SIMs sold by VIPnet in 2009
www.WirelessFederation.com/news: VIPnet, a Croatian subsidiary of Telekom Austria ended 2009 with a total of 2.6 million customers. However, despite a growth of 4.7% from the end of December 2008, the subscriber base remained almost flat throughout the second half of the year.
The number of VIPnet’s customers on post-paid plans was up 13.2% year-on-year at end-2009 while with 77% increase, its mobile broadband internet subscriber base reached 137,000 at end-December.
It has also been claimed by the company that it has an overall share of 42.6% of all active SIM cards in Croatia, behind market leader T-Mobile but ahead of Tele2.
BH gives Ericsson’s Croatian unit new 5.9Mn GSM contract (Bosnia & Herzegovina)
www.WirelessFederation.com/news: BH Telecom given Croatia-based technology provider Ericsson Nikola Tesla a new contract for GSM mobile network expansion worth HRK30 million (USD5.9 million). With immediate effect, the contract covers expansion of BH Telecom’s GSM/GPRS/EDGE infrastructure to allow for continued user base growth, as well as faster and more reliable mobile voice and data access across the network. Gordana
Kovacevic, President of Ericsson Nikola Tesla, said, ‘I am very pleased with the continued cooperation [with] BH Telecom in mobile telephony. It should provide a foundation for even larger projects with our strategic customer in further mobile network modernisation in Bosnia and Herzegovina.’
Croatian Parliament gives approval to new fees on mobile services
www.WirelessFederation.com/news: The Croatian Parliament has given its consent to the new fees proposed by the government for mobile services, in response to the economic crisis in Croatia. Pursuant to the proposal, mobile network services, including SMS, MMS and voice, will be subject to the payment of the fee, which will be paid by mobile network operators.
The proposed fee by the government is 6% of the revenues generated by the mobile service provider in a period of January-December, while the payment of fees to the national budget shall be effected by day 15 of each month. The Act has come into being from 1 August.
T-HT posts a drop of 2.9% y-o-y in net income (Croatia)
www.WirelessFederation.com/news: T-Hrvatski Telekom (T-HT) has posted a drop of 2.9% year-on-year to HRK1.1 billion (USD210 million), in net income. The Deutsche Telekom subsidiary, which includes mobile unit T-Mobile Croatia, blamed the drop in profitability on restructuring costs, where as it said the slight increase in turnover was driven by growth in its customer bases for fixed broadband internet access, mobile telephony and mobile data services.
T-Mobile Croatia introduces Mrak postpaid tariff
www.WirelessFederation.com/news: T-Mobile Croatia has launched Mrak postpaid tariff plan. The plan targets subscribers aged less than 28 years. The subscribers have to pay HRK 48 per month for this plan and entails 1,000 free on-net minutes between 19:00hrs and 07:00hrs (plus call set-up fee of HRK 0.58) and 25 MB of data traffic. Whenever the included minutes are used up, the subscribers have to pay HRK 0.58 per minute for on-net calls and outside the network calls are charged at HRK 0.88, per SMS are priced at HRK 0.28.
Mobilkom Austria appoints Dino Dogan as new CFO
www.WirelessFederation.com/news: Mobilkom Austria has appointed Dino Dogan as its new Chief Financial Officer (CFO). Dino Dogan will start working with Mobilkom from 1 August’09, replacing Alfred Gattringer, who will retire. Dogan will join CEO Hannes Ametsreiter and CTO Hans Pilcher in Mobilkom’s management team and will be responsible for the finance, controlling, legal and procurement & logistics departments.
Dogan earlier served as the CFO of Vipnet, Mobilkom’s Croatian subsidiary.
ENT grabs contracts in Russia worth HRK 19.5 mln
www.WirelessFederation.com/news: Ericsson Nikola Tesla, telecom equipment producer of Croatia, has won new contracts in Russia worth HKR 19.5 million. Ericsson won a contract from Kodotel for the initial phase of a GSM system implementation in the Voronezh region. The delivery of the equipment is scheduled for Q3 and the new GSM system will launch during this year’s fourth quarter.
Vivacell adds 5 destinations for Distant Call service (Armenia)
www.WirelessFederation.com/news: Vivacell-MTS, the Armenian mobile operator, has added five new destinations to its Distant Call service. The new destinations are Bulgaria, Croatia, Finland, South Korea and Slovenia. The calls made to the fixed and mobile networks in South Korea will be charged at AMD 80 per minute and for other four destinations charges are set at AMD 90 per minute.
