Romanian competition heats up

Orange Romania has held onto its lead in the mobile market but the second placed operator Vodafone is narrowing the gap between them. Orange has reported 8.043 million customers at the end of 2006, an increase of 550,000 in the fourth quarter, while Vodafone said last week that it had 7.717 million subscribers, up by 562,000 in the final three months of the year. Orange added 1.219 million net new customers throughout the whole of 2006, while Vodafone saw 1.585 million net new additions. Orange took over the top spot in the market from Connex (later to become Vodafone) in 2004.