10.4.2007

BMI: Bulgaria mobile penetration at 105%

Experiencing strong growth in 2006, Bulgaria's mobile market is now well and truly saturated with penetration at around 105%, shows data of UK media outlet Business Monitor International (BMI).

Aside from strong consumer demand, a highly competitive market, made more so at the end of 2005, when vivatel launched its GSM services, the operator is largely responsible for spurring on this growth.

vivatel, the cellular division of former telecom monopoly BTC, remains well behind market leader Telekom Austria unit Mobiltel, which at the beginning of April 2007, confirmed it had 4.4 mln subscribers to its network, and also behind Globul, the Bulgarian arm of Greek mobile operator Cosmote. At the end of 2006 it had 3.3 mln customers.

Also helping mobile growth has been the introduction of 3G services with Mobiltel and Globul launching services in March 2006 and September 2006 respectively.
Having said this, BMI is cautious on its forecasts for take-up of 3G mobile telephony with our forecasts suggesting a total of about 70,000 subscribers by the end of 2007.

However, on the back of revenues of 342.3 mln euro for 2006, representing a 25% year-on-year increase, Globul has launched its video portal using 3G technology. Open to prepaid and contract customers, the service will provide live TV feeds, news and weather information as well as video and film trailers. This, the operator hopes, should raise the number of value-added customers.

Globul commercially launched its 3G services in September 2006, with initial coverage offered in Sofia, Plovdiv, Varna and Burgas, representing around one third of the country's population.
It had originally been thought that Globul would seek to launch 3G in 2007, but Mobiltel's own surprise launch of its own 3G services in March 2006 prompted Globul to bring its commercial deployment date forward.

At a time when mobile subscriber growth is no longer the ultimate goal for leading operators Mobiltel and Globul, both operators are trying to expand their profit margins by increasing ARPU, notes BMI. Certainly, launches such as Globul's video portal will help.

Both carriers are also attempting to migrate as many prepaid users to contract subscriber status, as it is widely recognised that it is contract customers that are more valuable to operators.
To this end, Mobiltel managed to increase the number of its postpaid customers by 27.5% during 2006. Globul needs to ape this level of growth. Any improvement to its 3G services should help it in this endeavour.(Dnevnik)