Globul, the Bulgarian mobile unit of Greece's OTE, maintained its share in the highly competitive Bulgarian market on the back of solid revenue growth in the second quarter of 2008, its parent company said August 28.

Globul's service revenues increased by 11.3 per cent, driven mostly by contract revenues (up 17.5 per cent), but was also helped by a 95 per cent increase in data revenues following the introduction of 3G services.

Globul posted a significant operational income before depreciation and ammortisation (OIBDA) margin improvement in the quarter despite strong growth in the contract customer base. Key cost elements contributing to this improvement have been network expenses and marketing, with total operating expenses growing by 2.8 per cent, the second-quarter financial report of the parent company showed.

Globul continued to focus on the post-paid customer segment, adding 112 000 net new contract subscribers, to bring its contract customer base to 1.9 million, or 48 per cent of the total, OTE said. As in previous quarters, pre-paid customers registered a decline of approximately 45 000, leading to an overall customer growth of 67 000 and a base of 3.95 million subscribers.

Globul's blended average minutes of usage (AMOU) for the first six months of the year was up by about 20 per cent, reflecting a 41 per cent increase in pre-paid AMOU following commercial initiatives to stimulate usage and the customer base rationalization. Reflecting lower post-paid average revenue per user (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.

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